


hikoboshi

by ruruka



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Multi, this is a sugar daddy au but also there are like 13 other plotlines i wrote it all in a week thanks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-16 23:34:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14821029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Summary: Naegi lives an extraordinarily tepid life.





	1. Chapter 1

Naegi Makoto is late to his 8 AM Saturday shift ninety percent of the time, and eighty-nine percent of the time, his excuses are veracious.

(The one morning he'd swapped out 'slept in' for 'm-my uh- my cat threw up' hadn't cut it with his taut jawed superior).

"My power went out over night." The pathetic sheen to his expression trembles back at him as he bows toward the sleek cleaned tile floor. "So my alarm never went off this morning. I promise it won't happen again."

Ten minutes after opening trails in few consumers. The store around them is quiet, fluorescent lights the killer of his half hour opened irises, thin within their backdrop of wide white upon the look that cuts him back once he straightens. His manager has never been a morning person.

"What's keeping me from firing you?" she says, taps her harsh scarlet stick ons along the check out belt. His eyes fall to them, and in a swallow, he's ducked behind that belt himself to take the position she'd filled in for the past while. She stays, though, keeps her heels planted just the same as one hand falls to a full hip and the second beneath his chin. "Is it that cute face of yours?" And she's putting on a smirk that's just as quick to die off into a grip on his jaw so tight it sings. "Well, it ain't gonna get you far if you keep on showin' up an hour late! You're wasting my precious time, Naegi-bou, that just won't do."

Converse to poloed shoulders, his body takes a shiver. "R-Right," he tries despite the grasp. "I'm sorry, I'll be on time next time. I'll-I'll be here early!"

Sidelong, the automatic doors flap before the entrance of a stout little elder, drawing their eyes a flash and drawing her touch away from his face to rather cross over her chest.

"Hinata was here on time," she mutters to him. Quickly the irritation melds to a gloom, twirls a curl round one finger. "Koizumi was here on time. M-Mioda was here on time. Is it 'cause you don't like me? You're trying to avoid me as long as you can! How mean, mean, mean!"

"No, Enoshima-! It's-it's nothing like that, really, I just suck at having the first shift. Maybe you could swap me with Nidai's four o'clock-"

"There's someone else, isn't there?" Sniffles weave through her every word, until she's boohooing a gush of tears down her face, and all he's to wonder is if they sell such a quality waterproof mascara in a place like this. "Y-You don't wanna work for Junko-chan a-anymore b-b-because you're gettin' good muff from somebody else, huh?!"

The switch back to a chainsaw tone has him reeling near as much as the accusations. Most so, he's concerned for the few strangers who've begun to wander into the store for their first minute picks. "Enoshima, I _promise_ it has nothing to do with you or anybody else. It's _me_." Addressing that the one lipstick mark she's ever left on his cheek a month back doesn't count as courtship for the hundredth time, he thinks, would be a waste of breath. Her flirtations and despicably delicious body aside, bedding the boss is a depth he's never swam within because it only ever leads to confrontations like- well, like this one now. And he hadn't even gotten laid first.

His bedhead shakes outways to an exhale all sharp. "Enoshima, I'm sorry for being late again, and I'll try so so so so hard to get here on time from now on. ...Okay?"

All the theatrics die to another fold of the arms, temper even as the voice she finds next, sniffs once, faces away from him. "No. You're fired."

The hinge on his jaw gives up. "Enoshima, _please_ -"

"That look on your face is priceless!" she guffaws into it. "No way I'd give up the satisfaction of sipping up your sadness like a fat chai latte! Now get packin'! If I catch you back here, I'll wrap your dick in tinfoil and char broil it!"

She's leant forward, a gargoyle looming over him with an index in the face, makes his devastation kickbox with newfound fear, one two two one until he's decided to shake himself clean of her monarchy and make for the double door exit. The cigarette's already at his lips before he even reaches his car.

Replacing it, after a wispy temple throbbing cruise down the block, goes breakfast, because it's 9:31 AM on a Saturday morning, and the power went out over night, so, essentially, he's fucked. He should have known from the very first interview, when he'd been asked what color his underwear was (um- blue?) and how hot he found white girls (they're-they're alright, I guess? is this really part of the intervi-) that the hourglass vixen in the red polo shirt was no good. And six months of paying rent off her signature, he can attest he's learned that lesson a baker's hundred dozen times over, in her caterwauling in her tantrums in her mile a minute mouth that never stops spinning. And the flirting- he'd thought back on that not too long ago. It seemed a full day couldn't pass without that searing hot touch to his skin somewhere, lips ghosting on his ear to moan to him _Koizumi's on break, I need you to watch register four._ He...couldn't say he'd entirely hated the advances of a could-be supermodel, and perhaps never telling her no (though that's the rarest word in his vocabulary in the face of requests) is what's led up to him crammed in a booth flicking through job advertisements on his phone, but...but he doesn't have a girlfriend per se, so there was no harm in it, really. If stocking shelves and beeping barcodes will keep a roof over his head and milk in his fridge, then hell, he'd work at a hundred department stores run by de Sade's horny ex wife.

But he doesn't have the option anymore, because the power went out over night, and last weekend it was his car's front left tire, and the weekend before he'd dropped his keys behind the radiator at 7:52, and next weekend he'd probably have gotten his legs chopped off in his sleep and dragged himself through the sliding doors with his fingernails just to punch in his time card. But he doesn't have the option anymore, and landscaper (NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY!) is beneath his thumb just when it all fades to black, green, red. He blinks.

Green.

"Hey, what's up?" Above all the drama, he's still a gentleman, so he's sure to swallow the bite of value menu cheeseburger in his mouth before continuing. "You're awake early- everything okay?"

Just from her tone he can tell she's got the phone tucked betwixt ear and shoulder, always busy busy busy. "Mhm! Just wanted to ask if you're coming tonight before I forget. Oh- sorry to bug you at work, though. I'm kinda all over the place today."

"Uhh..." Condensation drips down his milkshake's cup. He watches it go. "Don't worry about it. Of course, I'll be there tonight! You can count on me, Sayaka."

Silverware clatters in the shadows. A blender begins to whir, picks her voice up an octave. "Great! We're all going out afterward to grab a late dinner, you should totally come!"

It's an automatic agreement from him, and their chattering continues quite idle as heat swallows every last nerve ending to her final thick sip on a fresh made strawberry smoothie goodbye. Hardly does a breath leave him before the dial tone's dragged his finger to his contacts page on a split instant. He doesn't count how many fries anxiety stuffs into his mouth as he waits, but he does count the calls, four to be exact, that it takes before one is answered.

Always the sweetest. "Motherfucker, call me before 10 AM again and I'll amputate your brain."

"Kuwata, I need you," he guilts, steals the grogginess from him as sheets sound a shifting. "...What's tonight?"

A moment goes to time. Kuwata's mouth slaps its own dryness. "Tonight? Hell, uhh- oh, Maizono's lil' open mic thing? You're coming, right?"

Open mic thing- right, right, she'd told him about it last Tuesday at yoga (which is why he hadn't remembered, because their mats were set in the back row and he'd spent the whole class with twenty eyefuls of downward facing _hot damn_ ). So he's got his outside source to fill in the details he'd sweated away, which he's sure to take in, time address venue, blah blah and yadda, clicks the call closed to let the rodent burrow back into his blankets and ditch back for his ride again. He's halfway certain gnashing a burger in the driver's seat is illegal, and if an officer pulled him over and smelled McDonald's on his breath at 9:30 AM, he's halfway certain he'd beg for a life sentence. But perhaps he's already got one, that's his life itself, on a sweet little Saturday where he's having dinner for breakfast and he's lost his job because the boss is a tree nut. That's life itself for the past two years he's lived in this stupid single bedroom house he comes home to now, because twenty was far too old to still be living with his family, Maizono had urged him, and he felt like a big fat adult with his very own house (even if he's renting and even if it's the size of a postage stamp).

When he ambles up the driveway, Sachiko is waiting for him, bouncing up to four lean feet to mumble up at him. He smiles downward at the soft rubbing all against his khaki'd shins as he tugs his keys from a front pocket. They're poised to kiss the knob of the side entrance when rather his eyes meet a Manila square stuck to the wood. Eyes wide to wonder, he plucks the note off the door to read it, and no sooner does he read that the rent's being raised than it's crumpled on his push inside. The cat tangles herself up within his feet to follow.

Keys clink to the kitchen counter top, palms following to hang his head forward into a sighing. His priorities all stack up in the Tetris board of his mind; somehow coming up with another twenty thousand yen a month, somehow coming up with anything at all- a job, a new job, maybe two, Maizono's performance tonight, um, anything else? He should do his laundry today so he's not stuck wearing a jam stained jacket to that. Another block rubs up against his ankles, meowing a whiny needy note to snap his gaze down. He exhales through his nose, drops to haunches so gentle to open the drawer nearest them both, and she's weaving all over like a slinking little earthworm, paws up on his knee to the new sight of the treats in his hold. "Alright, I'm getting them, I'm getting them," he laughs, serving her a handful of kibble on the tile before nudging the drawer shut with his foot. Sachiko nibbles happily. He wonders if food for strays has to be worked into normal people's budgets as well.

On a far wall of the connected living room, one he's squeezed a couch, coffee table, and television into with _just_ enough space left for a person or two if they're lithe, the latter flicks to life, volume only notches enough to give that illusion of company he so likes in the background. Perhaps the extra hours of it spent on with no purpose are driving his electricity bill past handleable, but perhaps he'll go grab his hamper and duck back out into the front hall entrance.

(Laundry on site- _score_ ).

He's stuffed the washer and fed it the last drips of detergent (another block, find a new department store to shop at) within several smart adult minutes, snapping the lid shut, turning the dial, knocking his fist three hard times against the side until he hears it begin to whir, all wonderfully sophisticated grown up things for grown ups who do their own wash and cook their own microwave mac and cheese. Rising anew, he takes to head back through the archway step up to the kitchen tile, stopping into a yelping from his depth. It's just that that he hasn't expected Sachiko to be beneath his shoe, and she's so narrowly missed being turned to mashed catatoes only because he's stumbled into dancing around her, grasping the nearest coat on the hook behind the door to anchor himself; and as he's lain to the concrete foyer flooring with a hoodie draped over his head and the coat rack matching his stance, Sachiko is sure to limber over to him and meow in begged exit.

Naegi huffs a weight past his bruised ribcage, pushes himself to his feet to open the door for her. The little black cat spins around about fifty times in the threshold.

"Go ahead," he cajoles. The toe of his sneaker nudges her butt all the most gentle. "It's okay. It's nice out."

At last she decides to dart out into that fresh June sunlight, and he's pleased to close the door behind her until he's caught a glance of terror in such immediacy he doesn't have the time to dread it. The cat's pattered her feet halfway down the driveway before confrontation strikes her; "Oh, come on, Kevin..."

In Sachiko's suddenly puff tailed path stands the arch of checker patterned adversary. The neighbors' cat, a foreigner moved over from the west to teach English at the town's middle school, he'd learned in one of their very few conversations where he's always relieved are slipped into his native lexicon for, and his wife who's a native herself and, interestingly enough, named the cat herself. Naegi thinks Kevin acts so tough because he's half American.

(The same rationale behind Kuwata, he'd received a hard knuckle noogie for saying).

But the neighbor cat's got his fangs showing now, hisses a melody into the air to let the other know she's in his way, beat it. Sachiko trembles her thick tail back and forth, ears flattening as she too calls out her warrior cry.

"Ah, hey!" The first swat forward is his nod to intervene. He dashes down the gravel. Where he's poised to alright, break it up break it up, his C- in high school PE is poised to steal his footing for a second time, lands on his face in the driveway and forgets what it feels to have the wind within him.

"H-Hey, come on you two, don't fi-" When he manages to glance upward, the cats have both dispersed, replaced by the slow pedal by of a neighborhood teenager on his bike, staring directly at his idiocy the whole ride past the house.

It's 11:01 when he's done smearing Neosporin on the gash on his chin (his mom had bought him a first aid kit among her many house warming gifts, so he's quite the proper adult, hah hah), sticks a bandage to it for good measure before throwing himself into the sofa cushions. He'll watch some closely silent day time TV, wait for his laundry, think about good things, good things.

He wakes up two hours later with an orange cat on his chest and drool pouring down one cheek.

At the wood of his coffee table, vibrations stir him, a mirror image of irony as he behaves now the recipient, though it is a next generation up pounding him through text after text rathered for a call. Notifications still roll in as he reaches to grab the device. Michio leaps heavy feet onto the floor and tutters away whilst his eyes go to focus on the screen, rubbing the ache of his jaw in a sit straight upward.

(Saturday, 12:17 PM) komaru: Makotoooo are you coming???!

(Saturday, 12:23 PM) komaru: mMaakotoooooo

(Saturday, 12:57 PM) komaru: makoto

(Saturday, 12:57 PM) komaru: h

(Saturday, 12:57 PM) komaru: h

(Saturday, 12:57 PM) komaru: g

(Saturday, 12:58 PM) komaru: h

(Saturday, 12:58 PM) komaru: k

And roughly five million others. His fingers scramble to swipe forth an answer, and he's frustrated from the nonstop notifs, the nap he's just lost, the fact that he's just been asked if he's coming to an event he's never heard of for the second time this day, and- and how the hell had a cat gotten in? He slips himself between the table and sofa, leaves his phone on the counter after a sent out _WHAT?_? to investigate the front hall. It doesn't take more than a millisecond to notice the side door swung wide open. A chill clamps him despite the outside heat pouring in. How many times does this stupid faulty old door have to creak open on its own before he remembers he needs to lock it with every close? Idiot. He palms it shut, locked, moves to return inside and poke his nose around for any other intruders. The most evidence he finds is sandpaper lick marks in the butter dish. Just aside it, his phone still rests lit, three dots moving on the screen's left side to catch his focus. It lifts into his hand, makes him freeze.

(Saturday, 1:05 PM) komaru: u were supposed to be here at noon to say bye to mom and dad remember???

(Saturday, 1:06 PM) komaru: dumbdumb head

(Saturday, 1:09 PM) komaru: if you hurry i can save you a muffin. chocolate chip. our favorite >:3c

He's yanked his fur ridden khakis off before he even replies. In the mess of everything, he'd stacked the blocks in such a fashion that he's wasted half the playing field of space, and GAME OVER taunts him now, stood in the kitchen in his underwear and converse sneakers to send back a quick _omw_ _now!_  and sprint for his bedroom dresser. Naturally, the drawers are emaciated, because he'd left his laundry for last minute, and a good ninety percent of his wardrobe is sitting soaked in the washing machine right now, because it'd completely slipped from his mind that his parents are using the funds they've saved over the years of a half emptied nest to spend a week in Taiwan together.

To put his thoughts into eloquent motion: shit.

Another handle tugs outward. His underwear and sock drawers are entirely vacant, though he supposes the one he's been wearing have another day or two left in them. More searching, and he manages to piece together a delightful outfit of the skinniest black jeans a man's ever owned, ones he dares not exhale in out of pure fear and understands suddenly why they remain folded in his dresser still (admits only to himself that he may have...gained some paunch since having to fend for all his own meals); the shirt's an eyesore, though he shuffles through the fallen coat rack's spilled innards on the foyer floor for something to zip up to his chin. Wonderful, alright, he'll make it the twenty minute drive, even if he has to keep his jeans unbuttoned to do it.

"There's my handsome little man!" The rings on her hand are gelid against his face, but he wouldn't pull away for the world. Not two minutes after he's walked inside does she tilt his chin up to leering. "What happened to your face?"

"Ahah, I was...trying to break up an argument." He moves his gaze forward to her growing concern, allows instead his second parent to take the reigns of arms around his middle, lifts him right off his feet as a bear nuzzles the honey hive.

"My boy's here!" his father gleams. "I almost thought you wouldn't come to see us off."

He laughs another shaky note, silently willing his legs not to drop him as he's set back to them. "Sorry I'm late, I've been, uh, scatterbrained lately, eheh."

"Lately?" he hears over the way, trails over to sit aside her on the living room's long couch, accepts her grin alongside the chocolate chip muffin handed his way.

"Tell us about it," his mother insists. She places herself in an adjacent armchair. "Auntie Mina isn't coming to drive us to the airport until 3:00. Oh, you'll stick around until then, right, sweetie? I'm sure she's just dying to see you."

"Uh," says his mouthful of muffin. "Sure, I don't have any other plans."

His mother smiles sweetly, then urges him onward to follow her original thought. He rests in that thought a bit, plays a staring match to the carpet, thinks it looks amazing for having had so many drinks spilled across it the past twenty years, thinks about the birthday cake frosting stain on the ceiling because it was his tenth rotation round the sun and three-months-from-six year old sisters are antsy when the attention is off them so long; he's staring up at it, now, just thinking, thinking, what exactly to _tell_ , and he's thinking about the hammock in the backyard that lasted approximately ten minutes with he and Komaru swinging back and forth on it before their father joined them and they heard the tree branches groan as he tells them, "I lost my job today."

"What?" his father says on instinct, and he splays his hands forward to have the words stolen from him by his wife, "How did this happen?"

A palm cups his nape. "Well, uh...I showed up late a couple times and...y'know..."

"Oh, Makoto-"

"Do you need some help?" His father's already begun to reach for his back pocket wallet, though he's quick to deny. "No, no- I'm fine, Dad, really. Don't worry about me, just have fun on your trip, okay?"

"Do you need to come live at home again?" Komaru blurts aside his head, to which he recoils the slightest, though she goes on, "You're totally annoying, but I wouldn't mind..."

"Gee, thanks, sis..." Brows flatten to his eyes, but he shakes the expression clean to face kindly his parents again. "I promise, I can handle it."

Mom's mouth purses before she allows, "Alright, honey, but we're always here if you can't. ...Maybe spend a few nights here this week, anyway? I'm sure Komaru could use the company."

The siblings glance to each other on instinct, nose to identical nose, before she makes the first move to elbow him over and he mimics it to knock her flat against the sofa's back, laughing. " _Maybe_ you can stay over, but you have to say please."

"You two..." sighs their mother into a smiling. Her hands rest pretty in a fold atop the lap. "Makoto, you'll get back on your feet before you know it. What else has been going on? The good stuff, hm?"

"Yeah," his father interjects, since perched to the couch's arm beside him. "Tell us how your girlyfriend is doing."

The color steals his face before he's any chance to rescue himself. " _Daaad_..."

"Alright, alright- friend who is a girly."

He relaxes back into himself; the house around him feels- and, look, he's getting stupidly wrapped up in nostalgia, but it's his home, and it smells like muffins after five hours of nonstop shit luck. His parents are here, they'd been sure to remind him, a safety net...a hammock. On a sunkissed summer Saturday, freckles the most prominent cross the noses, snapping apart papico bottles with all the world's excitement manifested within the gut. And no branches break and nobody falls to their asses, it's home where Mom and Dad and Komaru are, big enough for more than one tiny man and some raggedy cats to go in and out.

And it's 3:04 the next he knows, after he's chattered on about girlies and all else, successfully having caught a beetle on his very own to release outside the other night (despite the whining wishes for his father's presence at the time), the new towel he bought for himself recently blue and soft and Target-scented. Good things. The knocks to the front door call on the car they'd already seen pull up the drive, and his aunt _is_ over the moon with his presence, the squish marks on his face will attest to that. A kiss covers the fingerprints just afterward, one for Komaru to match and another bear hug each. Watching them all walk out the door with rolling suitcases the caboose catches his throat. They'll be gone a week, just a week, he's gone longer than that without seeing them since leaving home, but he finds himself tightened all the same.

"What's for dinner?" draws him away from the melancholy, where Komaru's already dropped herself to the armchair beside them to swipe along her cell screen.

He inhales to fit his fingers into a front pocket, and with keys jangling in hand says to her, "Whatever you're making. I've gotta go-"

"What?" The rat nest of brunette peeks from over the chair's back. She peers to him with glossed over greens. "I thought you said you didn't have plans today!"

Opposing her frown, his mouth flattens straight. "I...well, later I do. And I have to get my laundry in the dryer, and make sure the water bowl outside is full, and-"

"But that's lateeer," she frowns further. "Come on, we never get to hang out anymore! There's a new really cool magical girl movie I recorded on the DVR. I haven't watched it yet, 'cause I thought you'd like it, too..."

The line of his mouth furthers, and he's tempted to tell her he's no time, yet the wash of misery over her face has never failed to sway him, and it doesn't start now. "You sound like you love me or something," he smirks, shoving her chair into a spin as he takes the matching one beside it. She's able to catch her footing enough to turn herself back forward, nudging his with her sock to make it twist half a while.

"I don't," she assures him, moving farther to dodge his outstretched arm. "You leave your clothes all over the floor and your feet stink. And your legs are hairy."

"Yeah, and you're loud and you drink all the milk-"

"No I don't, you eat cereal for every meal!"

"And you interrupt me every time I talk," he continues, taking a grin of flush teeth. Even in the face of pseudo bickering, it feels _good_ to just be here, just spending time with his sibling. Even if her next move is bearing her tongue to him. Even if he's spent close to all his life dangling spit over her face and having his socks stolen ( _borrowed!_ ), she's still been his best friend through all of it. Jerk.

It takes nine minutes of cinematography before one of them starts to chatter, one of them's got their phone beneath their fingerprints, then both, then there's more talking than movie at all because that's how it goes with the pair of them, always the bane of anyone who brings them to the theater. Naegi swings himself closer at her prompting, look look, she's got this brand spankin' ultra rare card on her gacha game, and he oohs and aahs and offers a trade deal she's quick to refuse. And so forth and so on, Komaru's legs are pittering back and forth in her seat, temples hardly sundered as they both gaze on her collection. He finds the time to think it funny that they're poised so in these seats, as they've grown up knowing these their parents' spots and the sofa their own field. A minute detail that makes his collar wish a straightening and shoulders beg a higher hold.

The credits roll before either knows the protagonist's name.

"That was so good!" Komaru cheers, and her brother nods, twists in his chair all the idle before catching an evening sky timing, hooking his lips a touch cringed. She tilts her head in question to the new expression, knees tucked beneath herself in her spot, comfy cozy, to which he sighs himself standing.

"Okay, I really have to go this time," he's firm in, yet should a strong enough wind wisp by...he shakes his head. "The thing starts at 7:00, I still have to dry my clothes-"

"Wear that! You look fine."

He aims to her a frowning. "Komaru, I got this shirt like, five years ago when Dad took us to that amusement park. It says 'I puked on the teacups'."

"Well, you _did_ puke on the teacups," she tells him, then finds herself hopped upwards the same. "What are you even going to, anyway? Some fancy shmancy party?"

His key ring again finds an index. "Maizono's performing at-"

"Ooh! Can I come?!"

"-at a bar...sorry."

Komaru seems to slump from her very core. "Come _ooon_ , Makoto. I can still go inside if I'm under twenty, right? Just no drinking. That's gross, anyway."

"We'll both get in trouble," he tells her in an exhale. "I'm sorry, next time, okay?"

Her pout and fold of the arms does not relent even as he moves to squeeze her into a hug, bids himself off and takes to the front door, and his nose is a centimeter from disappearing behind his inch-an-hour closing of it when she returns it in a quick shout. Enough to satisfy him. The latch clicks. He pumps the concrete porch walk steps along to his car in record timing.

The shitty little Corolla is exactly that, but it's been there for him since senior year and he can't see giving up something that works impeccably for the sake of style. The emptied paper milkshake cup in his center console and give or take five thousand scraps of trash on the backseat floor don't bother him either. Cozy.

After such a kind afternoon to follow that morning, going back home feels almost a burden on him. It isn't home, it's the single bedroom house he rents. The neighbors are nice, though the area itself speaks less so, makes him tense at each eek throughout the nights. Suddenly, he wonders if he'd locked the door before he left.

And suddenly, all the more pressing, he wonders why his car's begun to struggle, wheezing on another meter at his desperate lead foot to which he's taken melt.

"I'm begging you," he says, "another five miles. I'm _begging_."

But the car hears not his pleas. He's only so fortunate to guide it over to a close by curb before it settles into silence.

There's most certainly a thick mark left from the weight of his forehead slamming to the wheel.

Fingers still poised at its top, he thrums them all once, sits straight again to face his misery. He could get out and he could pop the hood and he could pretend to be a muscular straight guy and poke around at the...engine? That's under the hood, isn't it? And there's some gears in there, he's sure. Machinery.

He decides another call to Kuwata is in order.

"Hey man," is his greeting, a flipped switch into amiability. "Listen, sorry for bitchin' at you this morning. We cool?"

Hands searching the glove box, Naegi nods to him, then replies, "Yeah, don't worry about it. I really need your help, though. My car broke down on-"

"No can do, Naegs," is what comes to choke him. "I'm already on my way to Maizono's to take her to her show. We gotta be there early to set up and test all the audio crap. I got a superstar in the making here, Naegi, I can't blow this now!"

Disdain carries for both the response and the three quarters melted bag of gummy worms he rifles to the side of all the spilling paperwork. "...Okay, okay, you're right. I'll figure something else out."

"That's my boy, always the trooper," Kuwata says. "I'll see ya later, don't think your car hittin' the shitter is an excuse to miss the night of a lifetime."

"Right," answers his tight teeth. "I'll be there. Bye."

Throwing his phone out the window beneath a passing truck's crunch would tempt him were he not so involved in keeping the stack of papers from fulfilling its sudden slip outward. A hand rushes too late to catch the fall. The floor of his lefthand passenger side fills with four years worth of junk mail and wrappers. His insurance card rests on the counter at home.

It's just...too much. Too much. Too much.

And all at once, not enough. Enough not enoughs have built up to make a too much- the irony of it would make him _scream_  had he the gall! Long slow breaths, that's all he's got to his name for the moment. His options dangle before him. Kuwata and Maizono; his two best friends, always there for him, always helping each other when in need- big fat zero. His parents; of course, they'd even said themselves they'd always be there for him! ...unless they're halfway to another country, of course, of course. Komaru's as legal a driver as a newborn squirrel. His slew of friends has deteriorated in his fingertips since high school graduation, as is the nasty way of life, and those he'll see for the occasional coffee live such paces away he'd feel thrice the burden for asking their help. Who's left, every person he's ever gone out of his way for for not a single spec of a return- that leaves him with billions of options then, fantastic! Now, to track down the thirty thousand women he's given his bus seat up to or the sixty million classmates he's held doors for that he heard spilling insults about him in the same locker room he'd followed to enter- hm, maybe the people he's let go ahead of him in the grocer lines who's daughters showed up with a full cart in remarkable haste? Oh, no, no, he's got it, he'll call Ranmaru Ryuu, the boy who sat aside him in middle school Earth science and begged to copy his quiz answers, he'll really owe him one, honest! and Naegi's paper had been handed back to him the next class with a big stinking ugly zero at the top because his answers were exactly the same as Ranmaru's- cheaters never prosper, Naegi-kun!

His face blares flush. The whites behind either eye dare to sting. He knows he's stalling. He knows what to do.

The phone lifts to an ear. It rings long enough for his trachea to settle into strength, though the acceptance of the call, faced with silence in place of sweet moshi, is close to cutting the throat clean on its own. "...Kirigiri?"

"Yes," is all she says in return, not questioning, not bidding him to further speech, merely affirming. He sweats against the screen.

"...Hi." Tongue, lips, bite. "Um...you're-you're the only person I could call, I'm sorry. I...I need you, Kirigiri."

She's pulled up beside his wreck within the hour. Something in him breathes a sigh of relief, and something else tugs it instantly back to flatten him broad. But he's tucked into the passenger side of her Civic, fingers tense to the belt across his chest, hardly daring to look to her. Should they meet eyes, he thinks he'd be knocked out cold.

"...Thank you," he says, facing solid front. "A lot. I really owe you for this."

"Mhm," she says, and the turn's close to coming up for his place after some agonizing silence, and he's quick to correct, "Uh, could you drop me at Happīawā, actually?"

After all his precisely plotted plan points, he still has ended up twenty minutes pre-concert with nothing to his name. Laundry will have to wait.

The turn of her glove over the steering wheel aligns to the slow cut of her glance sidelong. "Taken up binge drinking, I surmise."

He goes for the classic laugh off to battle anxiety, though the button clasp at his waist draws him winded in a moment. "No, no," he assures as they cruise along forward. "Nothing like that. I'm, uh, watching Maizono perform there."

Somehow, the silence beds its claws deeper. Kirigiri offers not a flick of response back, leaves him to will the shamed hue from his face. "...You can come too, if you want."

Her lashes are thick and natural when they pad against themselves. "I have plans."

A swallow trembles down him. "Okay, just...wanted to offer, eheheh..."

Dark evening spins past his gaze thereon. Thoughts of his vehicle poke through his mind, and he supposes he should've called a tow, but he's goddamned sick of phone calls and texts and all the etcetera. Had he no phone at all, he thinks his quality of life would have skyrocketed years ago (even if he would miss the gacha games). He'll have plenty of time to worry about everything later, though, _plenty_. For now he's content with the neon that glints in the passenger window once they pull up, where she shifts to neutral and says null. Naegi offers his kindest smile her way.

"Thank you," goes his bow. "...How about we get lunch together soon? My treat, ah, as a better thanks."

Straightforward only the literal. "Mhm," is her parting call, and he's left in that awkward messy limbo of uhh, do I get out now, oooor... until at last clicks himself freed to the curb, waves her ado through the window that's already a meter past him.

_Yikes_. Every muscle plays stiff to his turn around. But this'll be- what had it been dubbed? The night of a lifetime? Perhaps not so grand, though what's he to compare it to? Nothing as of recent. Watching a gorgeous wannabe idol prance around in all the glory she's to yet muster- and _gorgeous_ has for certain been an understatement once he's entered the bar, stoic and hushed for the time being, and she's waving him over to her seat in the corner of the barstool row.

"I'm so happy you made it!" Maizono claps. "Kuwata told me what happened. That stupid ass. I wanted to go get you but he wouldn't let me." He watches her gloved hand go for an ounce of nuts from the bowl along the counter, notes the glass aside it with a quarter sip of liquor left in the bottom. "I swear, the second I can find another _manager_ , he's out the door."

She chews the mouthful, swallows it back with the rest of her drink, tilts back straight to shake herself out. "I'm sorry, I know I'm talking a lot. ...Pre show jitters."

"It's okay," he's sure to assure, presses a smile after an airy laugh. "Are you on soon?"

Maizono nods. "In about ten minutes. I still haven't heard from Ibuki, either. That's mostly why I'm so nervous."

"Oh, Mioda's coming?" That's enough to shadow anxiety over himself as well. He likes her well enough, a kind face and persona to match ten times over, always willing to take his register during a smoke break- and that's just it, it's that he _knows_ gossip spreads around Target employees quick as it does high school betties, so the loudest mouth among them will undoubtedly spill his departure to one Maizono Sayaka who needs not know of it. And one Maizono Sayaka is nodding to him again, popping a square of spearmint into her mouth, saying around the chew, "She's supposed to be...I don't know who else could play my backups, it's too late to call Kaede."

"Are you forgetting you've got the God of punk rock right on your ass?" Two hands grasp her bare shoulders, make her flinch hard until his grin is revealed around the bend and she's no longer afraid as she is exasperated. "If Mioda doesn't show, I've got you covered."

"I thought you wanted me to succeed," she remarks through her teeth, though he's deaf to it for his attention divvied already to catch their other and proclaim, "Hey, Naegi, remember in tenth grade when I let you copy my algebra homework that one time?"

He hasn't the will in him to make a quip, still wrapped within thinking back on the spiral he's gone down today, replies merely, "What do you want from me?"

That grin heightens, hand outstretches. "Let me get a smoke."

Naegi's eyes drift closed, drinks a sigh all the goodnatured while reaching for his jean pockets. It's a task, seeing as they feel rather plastered to his skin, though altogether spell empty regardless, and he's checking his coat pockets the same with the only prize being his cell phone. "Ah, sorry. I must have left them in my car..."

"You don't need that, anyway," mends Maizono, who takes a pale surprise to her turn toward the second. "Makoto, are you okay? You look more nervous than I do."

"Probably worried we'll both forget about him once we're big ol' celebrities after tonight."

"Leave him alone, Kuwata." The forth-back spins his head a touch, and another more comfort inducing falls to his arm, manicured and peachy perfect. "Let's get you a drink, it'll help you relax. Excuse me!"

The last bit's been to signal the bartender, though the lift of her arm that shows off her toned taut middle-exposing ensemble of frills catches the gaze of eyes down the way. Several men nudge one another. Naegi's mouth lay flat.

Once the tender has approached them, Maizono turns to ask his preference, inadvertently halts the process altogether when the woman behind the counter orders him stern for an ID. Babyfaced motherfucker. To another reach for the pockets, deja vu dawns upon him. "Uh, I left my wallet in the car, too."

Maizono pouts while the bartender shrugs in an utmost lack of sympathy. The former still insists, "Its alright, I can pay for you- don't give me that look, Makoto. I want to. Want something to eat, or a soda or something?"

"Hey, as long as you're payin' I could really use a rootbeer," Kuwata chimes in. Deep blue rolls to the ceiling, though she nods acceptance to the tender.

Naegi balks in uncertainty. Refusal will get him nowhere with her, he's learned time and time and time again, so he glances across the screen menu above their heads to spit out, "Um- I...soft pretzel? Please?"

"Those aren't vegan," she tells him quick, "You'll get sick."

Ah. He supposes he should be more well versed in dairy if he's to keep this going. "Oh, right, uh- ...Glass of water."

"A slice of birthday cake and a Four Loko, if you please!" calls the slap of two palms to the counter just aside him. The shock of it pinches him, but the easy relief cast in the voice of the next works a cooling force; "There you are, Ibuki!"

The newcomer steps once backward. Her expression bears the pride of a grin, guitar case strapped over a shoulder and outfit as outrageous a firework show as ever. "Yep, yep, right on time for sweet Sayaka's big show! Ready when you are!"

"Good, 'cause you're both on in two minutes, so get the hell out there." Their self proclaimed manager takes on a note of staidness. "Mioda, you look hot, so I won't dock you for being late. Just make sure you're both givin' it your all. Now go, hiyah!"

Between them, Maizono hops from the stool, smooths her mile round skirt layers. Her smile is a breath of strength reflected in his hazy greens, and when she reaches to squeeze his hand one swift measure, he feels only guilt for whatever awful storm of luck he's just transferred to her. That hand moves to grasp her back up artist's, and both girls bounce off toward the far back of the building. Naegi forces a laxity. Two glasses slide to their end of the bar. Ice water sweats gladly down his throat.

Lights flutter above for a beg of attention. The half hundred patrons within begin to fade their chatter, all willing, because the majority have only cared to be here in support of this weekend's selected performer, because the majority heard this weekend's selected performer was an up and coming twenty one year old with an hourglass figure. Naegi feels the presence of another just behind him, where Kuwata's taken the empty seat to guzzle his soda and eye on in anticipation.

An older man, clean shaven, casual, steps up to the plywood sheet stage across the way, where hardly a full band could fit though he's sure they've managed. But the man- he grasps the microphone stand, waves off a wolf whistle and _looking good, Sagawa!_ to draw the audience into laughter with, "Sounds like Daidoji's here, that's wonderful." Just personally, the humor of the regulars goes directly over his head, yet he's poised to listen on once it moves to generality. "As always, welcome to the Happīawā's Saturday open mic night performance!"

Applause begins to rumble about, which he follows suit in until the speaker waves his arms to silence. "This week we are proud to present a talented young girl from our very own Saitama prefecture, Miss Maizono Sayaka!"

This time around, he's the first to clap. Positions swap out, and he sees it on her face the very second she steps on stage; divinity. Maizono adores the spotlight just as much as it adores her. Her greeting is a cutesy double wave _hellooo!_ combo that spurs cooing, and she moves in faultless fluidity to introduce her partner on the bass (draws laughter in jeering that she couldn't find a CD player in time) who waves fingers down the strings one time enough to call for the audience's praise yet again. His palms will be raw before the night's end, he believes, but he's here and it's _magic_ the way she grasps the mic, voice flooding in time to the guitar melody not a minute past, and she's just perfect up there, out here, anywhere, worthy of his every last bleed. The lyrics she prattles are some he's heard for ages, watched the ink trail as she penned them for the first time even, though like this, it feels the very first play. She's magic. She's perfect.

Had his hands not been resting in his jacket pockets, the magic would have continued all the evening's rest, would have made up for God's day long punishment beforehand, he thinks. But his hands were resting in his jacket pockets, so he felt the vibrations of the phone call coming in just after the second song's chorus, and his conscience would never allow him to ignore his baby sister on the caller ID knowing she's all alone in the dark of an old smart house.

"Komaru?" He's wandered into the men's room, where echoes still reverberate though at the very least lets him hear himself think. "What's the matter? Are you okay?"

Sniffling is enough to answer in the negative.

"Makoto...I'm scared."

A tug goes to his gut. One hand, family first. Another- Maizono's skirt is thigh length. "What are you scared of? Did something happen?"

His reflection faces him in a lean on one sink, listening onward to her whines. "...I just hate being alone... Can you please stay with me tonight- pleeease?"

That mirror image swallows into frowning, not anger not hatred but a sprinkle pinch of _ah, come on_... "...What about Fukawa? She could come sleep over-"

" _Pleeease_ , Makoto, you're my big brother, you're supposed to protect me..." The stabbing pout in her tone is palpable. He supposes the suggestion was rather mean, anyhow. Fog meets the thickness of his sigh.

It isn't until after he's already agreed to be her savior that he realizes he'll have to hike ten miles on foot.

"Kuwata." The open hall barroom throbs his eardrums again. One finger taps to the called on's shoulder to catch him in a twist around, and Kuwata grins so immediately to his sight he feels all the more penitence knowing he'll strike it clean. "I need you to take me home, like, right now.

"Huh?" A citric pinch steals it right on schedule. "You kiddin' me? No way, man! We're just getting started!"

"Please, Kuwata, it's an emergency," he says, and he's quite certain the truth would call for _so, tell her to grow a pair!_ His mouth wavers, then moves a centimeter from the other's studs. Kuwata tugs back all the harshest the same moment his whisper closes.

"Thats fucking disgusting, dude! Can't you just stuff some paper towels in there, or somethin'?"

"It's just a ten minute drive, you'll only miss intermission," he begs. "I'll buy you a whole pack of Marlboros."

Still sneering in revulsion, the other grabs his coat from the counter beside him. "Damn right you will. Let's go."

As he'd expected, the drive is close to silent, save for the quick reroute to ask it be his parents' place he's dropped at, which Kuwata grunts at but does not deny. Naegi sinks behind his seat belt; asking favors is his least favorite pastime, never taking one sole without the sting of being the week's burden. Those who spare him no reassurance as both his chauffeurs tonight have been only tuck him worse into the sickness. And no blame would fall from his lips. The bubbly I don't mind at all! Maizono type are few and far between. And Kuwata is usually not so slicing as he is under all this day's pressure. No blame.

He thanks him four times over for the ride once he's back on solid ground. Tire marks sizzle the asphalt drive in his searing tear away, leaves him searing his own to a heavy hearty exhale to take the steps up the front walk.

Five full minutes of knocking knots his stomach in worry; oh, he'd spent so long wishing this has never happened, wishing his sister could grow up and out of this fear of solitude she's clasped so long, and all the while she's been faced with rationale to the irrational, sawed at the neck by an intruder through a den window and she's lain to the couch with her head on the kitchen table and it's all his fault because he'd been such a terrible horrible big brother and he hadn't protected her and now she's dead and his knocking is so sharp his knuckles begin to raw until it is that the wood is stolen from beneath them and Komaru is yawning wide in his face, which is a good sign, because usually one cannot do so if they've been decapitated.

"Oh, hi." Fingers rub along one eye. "Sorry, I fell asleep."

Naegi blinks to her a good hundred grand. Maybe his fear riddled intruder fantasy will play out after all.

But he hasn't the energy, rather steps inside to corral her back up the stairs, door double checked for a lock behind them before they've trailed up to the square of the second floor. In the last two years, he's only visited his previous bedroom a handful of times, though each view has proved it mostly untouched. His peek inside shows the same, vacant only of what he's taken to his relocation and several trinkets his sister had raided to bring into her own dominion upon his leave. That thief treads now toward the adjacent room, pauses to tell him, "Leave your door open..."

Despite the close overwhelm, the eldest finds himself nodding to her with the soft smile on his mouth. "Don't worry, I'm here." And wrapped within that calm, she takes to her bedroom and he his own, wastes no seconds to strip himself of his waist cinching (read: pelvis crushing) jeans and lay in the purple quiet of past held safety.

Life has been exceptionally lethal today.

He hopes no one noticed the jam stain on his jacket. 


	2. Chapter 2

The mechanic at the shop tells him the only problem with the car is that the gas tank was empty, and he's charged sixteen thousand yen for the services.

(It's just so very lucky for him that he'd had a stack of cash in his nightstand drawer, since all the banknotes in his wallet had been stolen from the front seat over night).

Sunlight wafts as a veil about their skin. Their- their their their, because Maizono had called this morning to ask after him with the slightest shoulder frost, and he'd apologized and apologized and promised to make it all up to her; she'd planned since the night before to cart him around to reclaim his vehicle, so he apologizes again once she's pulled up to his parents' place to collect his dumb sorry ass. Identical answers meet his every whimper, don't worry don't worry don't worry. It isn't that she behaves in agitation, only that he's got anxiety knotted round the heart, which leads them to the now where they share his living room couch after he's bought her lunch to thank her for the favor and apologize for his incompetence all at once.

Maizono's a sucker for vegan Thai.

"So, I think it went really well!" That's her punctuation on a close hour long palavering about the night prior. Naegi's more than happy to get the play by play, to absorb the second hand excitement the audience called out at Mioda's pre finale solo, her very own skipping and flouncing all across the barroom once she'd opened up to them all a bit more. She expresses only once her displeasure at his disappearance, and in sweet jest, because it had to be Kuwata's jaw that she cupped and he who'd received the flirty looks once she'd weaved through the audience during her most famous love ballad. She slurps a long cord of sen lek. Naegi's to force his laugh.

"I'm really proud of you, that all sounds... _amazing_." The thick simper on his face aims her way, all for her always for her. Mirror, she returns it, and two cups clink together, because they're goofy little idiots and things are okay in the moment. He sips, she sits, thumbs the thumbs in her lap and clears her throat into a stare his way.

"...Ibuki told me-" He stops listening there. Sunlight still kisses through the sidelong window, yet it feels no beacon to cherish for the now. She's thieved the okay right out from under his nose.

"Uh...yeah." What's he to say to further? Fingertips tap against the sweat of his glass. "But-But it's okay! I'm already looking for work again. I'll be alright."

Pink lips purse. He knows she'd know soon enough, though he'd have liked to be able to call her from his new job in accounting or landscaping and tell along that he's moved on to better things. Behind his mind, he wonders if she'd truly meant it when she said she craved after a new manager.

It's a hot hot June. "Makoto...things don't seem to be going your way lately." She pauses the lift of her cup to haste, "No offense."

"Well, uh...ahaha..." Wood prods bits of vegetable through the dish in his lap, sets it to the coffee table in the sudden vanishing act of hunger. Something about the way she speaks to him, it's grating along every fiber. Disappointment- a stumbling fear he's to so often face. "I guess I've always been...sorta unlucky."

Lap bared the same, she sits aside him, silent, silent, then, a burst of laughter. "Thank God you said something, I was a little worried you never noticed."

"Huh?!" And he pouts into a shift sideways stare just long enough for her to bat his arm. "Come on, Makoto, I'm just teasing! But, I mean...the first time I saw you, you _were_ getting attacked by a crane."

The pout turns to a pulsing. "I didn't even _want_ to join that club, someone just asked me to save him that day. I guess nobody else volunteered to jump in the pool with all their clothes on..."

"See, that's what I'm talking about. You always get the bad end of every deal, all because you're _nice_. It doesn't seem fair at all." Beneath her thighs, the fabric of the cushion is a plush brown, pets to her skin as the kindness she lilts of. And all at once, she's sprung from her gloom to point a finger skyward. "You just have to get yourself out there! Don't give up! You'll have it all together in no time!"

He blinks back. "Uh, wow, Sayaka." Shaking off the shock, "...Thank you, that's really encouraging. I think you're right."

"Mm-hm!" Stars glimmer through either eye. Palms fall flat, and beside those novas glides a snuffling. "But...it won't be as easy as it sounds. I'm in the same place as you, with the whole rising to fame thing. Don't be afraid to...y'know, work with what you've got."

Another mess of doting blinks, a tilt to the head so clueless hound. "Um...I guess so. I don't have much, though. I don't know how far a stick of gum as a bribe would get me."

Maizono scoffs to him, spots him into nerve, and she's placed herself near below him with her tuck of a lock behind one ear, batting the lashes all tender. "I don't mean it like that. I'm saying, sometimes to make it to the top, you have to do some...questionable things."

"Like what?" The hint? No, no, he's full, thank you.

"Let's just say, sometimes I lay awake at night knowing a thousand gross teenage boys have my centerfold stuck under their beds."

"Oh." Hotly, a flush steals him, accounting for the fact that he'll have a lot of googling to do later tonight. But- "I'm not sure I have the body for stuff like that."

Her frown is audible. "Trust me, there's lots of other things you can do. I think that might be a good option for you, considering it seems like you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than getting a job."

"...No offense?"

"Right, yeah of course." Sweet blue trembles in a shake of her head. When she shifts his way, the sun sifts now perfectly to a halo about her face, her eyes only gleaming pulchritude to stun him dirty. "I just think that, maybe, it might not be such a bad idea for you to look into something less...conventional. You're totally cute! A lot of guys would pay good for that."

"What, like sex?!" He's spat as though pure sin, and she treats him again as the obsolete boomer gone with all wind.

"Not strictly. Haven't you heard about all those sites? Men get off on just buying you things nowadays. It's great- how do you think I could afford a Prada bag?"

"Sayaka-"

"I know it probably _sounds_ weird," she waves with eyes aswivel. "But if someone told you they'd pay your rent for a year as long as you sent them a selfie of you smiling, wouldn't you be interested?"

A finger touches to his chin. He curses the eager curiosity in his asking, "...They pay your rent?"

She's the queen of the castle by her checkmate smirk. "Give me your phone."

"Huh? Wait- Sayaka, I didn't mean I wanted to-" Already has her arm pounced out to hook around his hip. They wrestle a good thirty seconds where he in no way plays a victor to her dancer's muscles, pins him pretty with her tiny and so very distracting shorts perched on his shins and cell phone below her French tips.

"Perfect, all downloaded!" flows a touch after he's given up the struggle. "Okay, let's see. Twenty two years old, lives near Tokyo, single...looking for young handsome tops-"

" _Sayaka_ -"

"It's fine, see, I won't even put your real name." The screen shows to his squinting, and he reads, "Shizuka Makoto? That's not even a surname..."

"It sounds super cute, though! Now, smile!" When the camera flashes, he is indeed not smiling, rather a pouting look beneath the glinting summer, both of them pressed into the photo she captions, "Me and my ex-girlfriend, pop sensation Maizono Sayaka. I was too good for her."

"You can't write that, I'll sound like a total asshole." Positions have swapped to allow him a seat beside her, unwitting in his loss of refusal to her scheming. Beside him, she nods once.

"You're right, gay guys aren't into the jerky type. Okay, me and my bestie, pop sensation Maizono Sayaka. She's too good for me."

He's frowning again, but at least she's more on track this time. The camera again points his way, this time sole, and he complies to the smile with a hint of shyness natural to him that she commends for its cute factor once they're gazing over the picture together. Cheekbones take a searing pride.

"Alright, I think it's done," she says after a minute's worth of typing, swiping. "What do you think?"

"Um," he blinks. "I think I'm...really embarrassed right now."

"Makoto, do you trust me or not?" is the card she's quick to pull next. "This will help you get back on your feet while you look for real work. And who knows, maybe your Prince Charming is just around the corner..."

Her smirk is aimed forward as the phone exchanges back to him, though he's quick to drop it to the coffee table top as though shame plays the same as a hot coal. She leans into her spot, styrofoam warm in the lap with a flick of the television to life. "Let's pick a movie."

" _Makotooo!_ " Socks pad newly along the kitchen tile, followed by needy mewls at the ankles. They glance over toward Komaru, where she's placed with a bundle of black fluff in her arms because, _rewind_ , that collection of his dumb sorry ass had included his sister's soft lonely heart pleading to tag along. She'd excused herself for a lack of hunger at lunchtime to trail along the garden path in search of tail swishes. "Where do you keep the cat treats?"

After a mouthful of iced tea, "Bottom drawer."

Tension ripples across his lungs; Maizono's beside him, his best friend since high school, just the mimic to eternity as she rests lax searching through channels. Cats are munching in the corner, he can hear that still, hears all the little feet skip to follow the front door opened for their exit. Then it's no longer the two alone, which eases the lump under his tongue, and Komaru's hopped up to the stool behind the counter adjacent the couch of the den it marks off. She comments forth and back to the other as they flick along titles, every so often noting the catch in his sister's voice to be just where it is that she is. All the years Maizono Sayaka's been a friend to them both, she's never gotten over that star struck twinge in her starlet presence. He remembers teasing her for having a crush on a biiig kiiid when she was only a middle schooler. He remembers the bruise on his shin the whole week to follow.  
  
Their matching chatter is a mistress to thought. Excusing himself, he drops the second half to his meal off before his gladly accepting sibling, slips into his bedroom to say he'd gotten soy sauce on his tee, he'll return right away. Behind the closed door feels a fortress for his pulsing temples.

Maizono's just sliced the aluminum fresh down the middle, and all the worms are plopping out upon his head and she's gone on as if nothing's gone on. Keeping with the facade, he flips himself out of the first shirt he'd donned, rummages through the still-warm-from-the-dryer basket atop his bed. He relaxes his shoulders into an exhale with a grasping of a random graphic, carries himself backward a few steps and readies the top hole to swallow him. But it's the dresser mirror that halts him, draws his focus, draws his wondering. Perhaps it's entirely freakish to check himself out like a dollface takes from the construction crew. His eyes still walk up him regardless, plush hips to cinched middle (and only the slightest softness of the tummy- he can work on that) and round, ample shoulders to finish him off. He doesn't look...strong, nor quite manly, and he's never found his upturned nose or gap tooth smile the most appealing. But...? No but, mere facts. Though, while on the topic, he's turned himself a tad to gaze at his backside now, and he must say, he's certainly seen worse.

Naegi wonders just how much skin must be included in these _selfies_ Maizono's deemed his newfound currency. The whole idea sets his stomach funny. He could delete the profile, and he could drag himself through the city to beg employers to sell their goods or wash their dishes or scrub their feet, quite frankly anything at all to fatten his pocket for the thirty seconds he can hold onto it before handing it all off to bill hounders. Existing costs a remarkable lot. He's sick to think on it.

Simmers dull not in his guts to the sudden rattling of his cell phone aside the laundry basket. Everything in him is tentative, tucking himself into the fresh tee, as he's still not over how royally answering calls and messages has screwed him in the recent past. The fact that the notification's come from the application most newly installed- ohhh good God, help him.

Heart pounding the throat, he sets aside hesitancy to swipe it opened, view the message he can't quite bring himself to dread.

_Suzumoto Ren: cute face._

He hasn't the time to decide whether to smile or not; the smirking pains his lips tautened, brought only to his simpleton's life anew by the rapping on his bedroom door. The scandal clicks back behind a tuck into his pocket, pulls open to meet the knocks in all curiosity.

"Makoto!" Gleaming white teeth bear his way. He's never seen Maizono so ebullient as she stands now. "Kuwata just called- there was a talent scout at the bar last night, and he said he's interested in me and wants to arrange a meeting! Can you believe it?! I have to go, right now, and talk to Kuwata about it. This is incredible- this could be my big break!"

All the blabbering her pierced punk agent had done could never prepare him for the real thing. Naegi's stunned a moment too long for his second guest's liking, who cranes over to tell him, "Congratulate her!"

"Oh- oh, right!" Of course he knew that. Regardless, a smile meets the hands he splays to joy. "I'm so happy for you, Sayaka! Knock 'em dead."

It is quite likely the most asinine thing he could have chosen to say, though it's kept despite it, clutched in her beam as it trails right from his house waving a dozen goodbyes and rainbow toned cheering. She'd left her lunch sitting closed on the coffee table. The television rests to the channel selection menu.

Just as soon as her ride's disappeared, he allows the mask to peel off. He lifts the remote, clicks the TV off, hipchecks the refrigerator shut once he's placed her leftovers inside and knees the front entry shut once it inevitably ghosts open on failure.

"That's super cool!" Komaru's still praising upon his return, eyes a dreamy hazel to gaze along the sky. "She's finally going to be a famous idol like she's always wanted. Man, I wish I could get that lucky..."

Fortune hasn't kissed him in far too long, as evident in the afternoon's conversation, truly moreover in every happening circled about him the past two decades. And it isn't to say those around him have it made, isn't to say he's a brat swollen in envy for other' accomplishments. Maizono's earned whatever it is she's got coming her way, he's sure, earned it through training, working, practice practice practice. And a nude photo here and there, apparently. Tea swelters in his middle.

Beside her counter seating, he's got the glaze of numbness over his expression, enough to demand her fingers waved before it a time later.

"Hellooo, are you alright?" The plush to her bottom lip pouts downward. "Makotooo..."

"Huh? Oh- yeah, I'm alright." Hands go to hips, chest goes to loss. "Sorry, just...thinking."

She hums a lengthy note in wondering, and she's perceptive as she is a stockbroking middle aged businessman, though still can catch the scent of trouble on her brother's skin. Her gazing tells the tale plainly, he knows. Every blink upon him is woven through concern, care.

For that alone, it takes all that he is to not smash down into a trillion ceramic bits.


	3. Chapter 3

Wet afternoon's up down razzling, lingers of fingertip burn, everything all at once that's never been enough- she can sense it on him, the way he drags himself along to such woe, and once the evening has begun to plait, she asks him to drop her at a friend's for tonight, the company will do her best to survive this week. He doesn't mind her choice to leave, there's hardly room for he alone to spend a night here, not much either to keep her entertained. And he'd been too surprised, anyhow, asking just to clear it that she's been given permission? Really, truly? Her answer had come to a clasp of the hands, wherein she'd called back, _Touko always tells me no when she really means yes! She loves my company!_

The speed to which he'd taken from the parking lot behind her apartment building could perhaps be recorded for Guinness. Not only so that he's swelled at the legs at every thought of facing the smart mouthed ragdoll within, but he's got errands to run that pertain to finding a department store close to home that doesn't house the ball knotting devil herself.

The next nearest is another fifteen miles off, the same chain store with the same red polos and same glinting tile that soaks him in post trauma. At least the air conditioner's on. He flags the darkened underarms of his shirt idly as he goes to browse the aisles.

Being beyond these walls at such an odd hour without being behind a register is a feeling akin to liberation. Nobody strolls through the cookware section at 4 PM. Nobody gets carded when they're a grown ass adult man trying to buy cigarettes, but Naegi Makoto proves to be a breed all his own with each passing morn.

Plastic bags settle in the passenger seat. He tucks the pack of red hundreds in the mailbox to apartment 3F on his drive back home.

Really, he's in no place to be spending a pocketful on trivialities, and he'd only gone in there to repay the debt of the prior night as promised, yet something had tickled him as he waltzed along racks of satin. Something in the form of three notifications sparking at the hip all complimenting what a real looker he is. And single, too? Wow, what a catch. Want some new shoes, handsome?

He's nearly too giddy to slip himself into the still tagged outfit, and so precariously tilted on the mortification scale once he's glanced in his bedroom mirror he doesn't think of any further peddling. Merely, it's a casual look, a lip dip v neck one size too taut, a calm and elegant boxer short to compliment the look (because a strong bit to him says rich guys on the internet won't appreciate puppy paw print underwear as is his usual style). But...jeez, is it ever embarrassing to imagine anyone seeing him this way (and if he can interrupt again, _yes_ , he's been taken to bed plenty, but strangers ogling his curves isn't comparable to Smirnoff scented breath on his neck and French tip scars down the scapula). The humiliation of the physical, number one, likewise for how quickly he's warmed up to the idea he first would spit at. What had it taken- a few compliments, and now he's here posed in the mirror to make sure his ass looks good and fat, lifts a leg no no sets it back down arch the back a little oh right there perfect take the picture- but, okay, okay, the money, too. Still...that reasoning feels twice the filth. He could always get some waitstaff job instead. He could get a waitstaff job and work for three weeks to make the same amount one photograph will garner within seconds. Blinking himself awoken in all senses, he shifts his body the second way, sucks in at the middle, snaps the censor.

It takes two minutes of updating his profile gallery before the attention begins to pour in at doubled fury.

_Otonari Takuji: Want to chat?_

_Nakamura Sota: Hey Handsome._

_Amuri Miu: i hope i can be an exception to the looking for men bit ;)_

_Tanaka Jin: You look like a goddamned gutter slut. Show some decency._

_Takahashi Eiichi: hey im vers is that cool?_

His gaga flush dies out to heart throbbing shock in a quick reread. So far so long, he's been hidden beneath too many layers of timidity to answer an inbox, though the one he selects, despite all irony, is the one most worthy of a shy away. Show some decency..? He'd like to point out that whoever's on the other end is on a site meant for paying people to just fucking stand there and look sexy. That in itself should be enough to tell him to ignore the bratty message, more than likely to just get a rise from him.

_Shizuka: excuse me?_

But he can't help himself when it comes to justice. Not for him, but for whoever's hiding behind the John Doe alias to rain flame upon his good mood- he'd like to guide them better to kindness. Everyone needs kindness.

_Tanaka: Have you had too much ejaculate shot into your eyes to read properly?_

Those eyes take to a dinner plate gawking now. He's shuffled aside shopping bags to place himself atop his sheets, knees to the chest, peering at the conversation before him with all the stun a man can muster.

_Shizuka: ...........  
Shizuka: ....did i do something wrong? i'm sorry i'm really new to this_

Perhaps. Though-

_Tanaka: You've wronged the both of us by flaunting yourself around in such lowly attire. Do you shop at a department store, for God's sake? You'll have to get something better if you expect me to be interested in you and your little "pictures"._

At once, the pieces click together in his mind; Maizono hadn't mentioned any of these roleplayer types, building up a story for him to fall into rather than the classic slop asking _uhhhhh nudes?_ But it's somewhat... _fun_ to him now, now that he knows such a jackal is merely the character mask put on, and just by chance could he sink into a shy school boy role (...who'd been held back a few grades- it's a perfectly legal fantasy, move along) and bat back at this man's critiques, follow the trail right into sixteen digits and an expiration date.

_Shizuka: oh you're right. maybe you could help me out with that?  
Shizuka: :-)_

He's blushing hot just to type it. Adrenaline coasts his teeth.

_Tanaka: No._

...And spits back out into his palm.

Refusal, was it part of the game? A terrible strategy, in his mind. Hardly does it make him wish to beg on as it splatters shame to his chest. Thinking of the proper route to travel next, he's cut off by the perpetrator's follow up.

_Tanaka: I'm not going to just up and spend my fortune on you. You have to work for it, that's the only way to build respectable character.  
Tanaka: And "working" does not mean posting more skimpy photos of yourself. Prove to me that you deserve my time, and perhaps then we can work something out that pertains more to your gold digging interests._

He's swiped into a new conversation before he's even finished reading. The next gentleman offers him a month's worth of paydays in exchange for a photo of his hand. Philanthropy's a delicious trait.

When he calls to pay the electricity bill on time, he swears he hears astonishment in the computerized operator's message.

He's been a member of the pay per babe community for exactly twenty one hours, and feels himself a monarch gnawing through emerald apple seeds. Had he been told a year ago he'd be here now, offering out emoticons for rent checks- well, goddamn, he doesn't think he'd have believed people like this could even exist. Guilt comes to him in waves, feeling as though he's played the thief, though victims aren't usually so willing. As per her demanding, he _does_ trust Maizono alongside her recommendations, no matter the scandal backing them. He's colored only in rose, too, as the very same trustee sits across from him now, on account of the midcity mall having just opened a milkshake kiosk that doesn't use milk or shake that they just _have_ to try, and more so that she just _has_ to tell him all about her discussion with the talent scout.

He sips mild to his straw as she fulfills that promise. "He pretty much fell in love with me! He even said he prefers my voice on its own- no offense to Ibuki, but idols dedicate everything to training their voices, that's a _huge_ compliment." Pausing for breath, hands wring at the fabric of her sundress to match a grinning. "And the best part is, even if he doesn't have any ties to a big label or anything, he wants me to perform at a Tanabata festival in Toyama! Isn't that amazing- I get to do my favorite thing in the world, on my birthday!"

Naegi goes into a nodding, has no chance for speech betwixt the next one with her questioning stuck to sunder. "Of course I'll be there, I wouldn't miss it for the world." His lips pucker to sudden dastardly logic. "That's like, a four hour drive through. Ouch..."

Perfect palms wave down at him. "Take what you would have spent on a birthday gift and put it toward the gas money. Your presence is my presents." Her giggling's too saccharine stirred to defy most often. Stiffness guides forward the jangle of bangles. "Oh, speaking of that, I have a Cosme giftcard I'm really dying to spend. Let's go!"

Early week midday is prime time for vacancy surrounding. He permits himself be dragged along by her, drops their cups in the trash on the way by like the ever loving gentlemen, permit himself be scalped and slapped and kneed in the teeth should she want it, and even then he'd be sure to clean up after her just the same. Sucker, not by the proverbial, only a lover, love love love. She turns to him with two identical mascara samples in hand, asks, "Which one?" and he tells her, "The left one really suits you!" because he is a lover.

This particular shop finds itself desolate mainly, lights high, mighty for all the lip pops and lid glitters to be surely seen at their best and surely brought home in a little white paper bag. Woman clack about in throat to toe black, can they help you find anything today? He's glancing along a hundred different shades of the same color lipsticks, idle and modest as any man in territory not his own. He only wishes the employees would see it that way, though he supposes getting asked if he needs help with sizing in Victoria's Secret has always been much more ego crushing than the blue eyed foreigner wondering now if he's finding everything alright. A nod goes her way, since he's _shy_ more especially round a pretty face, leaves him trailing around shelves of cosmetics.

Maybe it would do him good to try some out, he thinks, he'll bet a feminine type would catch a lot more tosses of coins. A lip lining pencil is a centimeter from his eyelid when a voice approaching starts it dropped away.

"Do you think I could pull off gold eyeshadow, or is that too...I don't know, Cleopatra?" The circle mirror frames both their pin prick pupils, though hers are a split half second to his everlasting, and she's smirking just enough to darken his hue. "Makoto, are you wearing concealer on your lips?"

"Uh- I'm...I mean-"

"Come over here, there's a whole area for you to sample products," she urges, gestures across the way. "I'll make you pretty."

She's true to her word; he never knew he had cheekbones so sharp as he views in a three sixty the time following, after she's demanded he stay still, close your eyes, stop moving your mouth! while flirting powders and pencils all along him. It's so entirely subtle, looks still bare faced in no pops of color nor dazzle, classy yet only defining further the masculinity in his features. He cringes a touch, but...he's pretty, and it's nice to be pretty.

"You should show this off," the artist proclaims. "You'll get a million offers to buy you makeup." As her smirk returns, the giftcard raises between to fingers to catch his eye a moment.

"Sayaka..." is his whine, all the sudden milky at the tummy, "I'm still not sure about that whole thing. I've gotten some...weird messages..."

A scoff fizzles her lips, leans toward the mirror to skim a shade of raspberry across them. "All men are pigs, straight or gay. To be honest, the worse they are, the more satisfying it is to take their money." Her mouth pops once. She turns to him in a simper he cannot return, and pulls the glitter studded phone case from her purse to catch a photo of them both together. "See, we look cute! I'll send this to you."

"I don't know-"

"Oh come _on_ , you think I didn't notice the new pictures you've posted?" She's smirking, because she's winning, because never a day goes by where Maizono Sayaka can be bound by last place ligature. "You're enjoying this, Makoto, and that's the point. The benefits don't even matter, I just want you to live a little."

Most people would have just taken him skiing. His palms are scrubbing the cosmetics from his skin the whole way of following her prance to the checkout, carried on light to eat up ocean air and he's alone in his bedroom with only the glow of technology reflected in his eye. Mai-san stretches out all four paws into an ahi breathed yawn at his feet.

An inexperienced landscaper has already been found. Drive thru coffee joints are in need of ears beneath their headsets, though he'd clicked that in pure ecstasy to find the nearest sits in Kyoto over five hours off. A ten hour commute may not be so bad, he thinks once he's scrolled through thirteen more job listings all far outside his qualifications. Discouragement spiraling the irises, it is caught by a flash over the top of the screen, stomach only having its pit trudged deeper once he reads that some nobody with cash to burn finds his butt cute. The conversation opens up before him, and he selects to delete its entirety. Several more follow suit- he can't take the shame of them looming over him, and if he's bound by full disclosure, he's debating a finger over the DELETE ACCOUNT option. The first day living in the ritz of sleazy attention had been born through his gung-ho go getter personality alone, shrunken to filth now that reality has shook him silly. So he'd had some generous sums transferred into his account- if ebanking took returns to anonymous patrons, he'd get it all off his chest. It's wrong to him. John Doe had been the only sane person on the whole site, he'd ought to work for it as he always has. His thumb goes to accept the demise of new dawn, though rather does her truth spill a clattering dull to distance, casts nerves tickled for a solid lift. Naegi perches himself sat upright.

Nighttime has called him to an early rest, porch light silenced doors all latched. He'd gone bare feet to gravel to collect the ancient bag of bones of a cat that wanders this block, laid her to her spot on his bed to assure her comfort through each night's rest. He'd always been taught to respect his elders. She does not stir again, though his ears detect their own snickering clanks, shifty, shambling. Cold air bites his legs as he's trembling his way toward the kitchen, the inside entrance. The noise grows louder with an ear to the door. Every bit of marrow hardens him still.

Though he breathes a hurricane from the nose, he's a big huge man a big huge adult homerenting man with bills and a car and responsibilities, so lifting the shade from the side window shall prove no match for him. Surely not. Surely not, since he does it! after an aeon of head spinning horror.

Fat yellow eyes stare back to him.

His heart ceases the constriction. One hand to it, the other pulls the doorway clear. He smiles down to the scraggly being. "Sachiko, you scared the heck out of...me..." To match hers, his own gaze goes as marbles rattling about the skull once he's set himself straightened, and it's only natural to collect such surprise when faced with a black clothed shadow of a man hunched in one's driveway.

They mimic one another for those expressions, battling forth to decide a first move- he feels it should come in form of his knees buckling into unconsciousness, though very apparently, a five foot tall big huge adult man in his underwear and a Batman tee shirt is enough to spook away criminals. Clattering sounds with the drop of the crowbar in his hold to the concrete, one having been used to clip at the crease of his car's front door, and he bends to scutter off in hot desperation only to lean back and grasp the weaponry in hands all the shaking. Across the front lawn dark boots sprint, out of sight before he's had the gall to blink.

Sachiko curls her tail around his calf as she waltzes between his feet into the house.

The door locks behind her, unlocks, locks, unlocks, locks. Windows all take the same and shades are tugged down to violence, and he's pacing the meter of living room floor space, sweat spicing every body contour. He peeks out the den's side curtains a split moment, then ducks into a dive for his bed to latch the door against his heels. Within the mess of comforter rumples, he rests on his haunches. Alert. Stammering.

His phone's vibration is close to cardiac arrest inducing.

_Watanabe Akira: do you know how much a polar bear weighs?_

He frowns at the device.

Mindless banter may be just the stress reliever he needs, however- and amateur angel looking for young handsome tops soon gaining the line _and_ enough money to move to a safe neighborhood will require a lot of sweet talking, so he humors the midnight phantom with a response, and checks back within seconds;

_Watanabe Akira: enough to break the ice :) hello, you're very sexy looking._

The conversation swipes to deletion. He sets his phone down to the nightstand where it takes its plug, and attempts rest in hair soft to pillowcase. Not a hot minute does the serenity last. He's got his head snapped back up at the faintest rustling, tiny black paws massaging his comforter to better liking before she curls back into rest aside Mai-san's weighted breaths of sleep.

His sister, he thinks, has been right all along to whimper in solitude.

"And you didn't call the fuckin' cops?!"

The shout houses several newfound glares. In the midst of a public shop- that's really no place for profanities, yet he's come to expect no better from Kuwata, in all honesty. Tagging along on his errands is lightyears better than stewing in the anxiety his home brings about. Telling the story behind that twist of the innards is what's sparked the cacophony by the guitar string rack; Naegi shrinks into a shrug.

"Uh, well, the guy didn't actually do anything...I don't want to get him in trouble."

Kuwata's fist is brought down into a clench. "You gotta be kidding me, Naegs. If I didn't love you so much, I'd punch your lights out- hey, thanks for the cigs, by the way. Hope everything turned out alright with your lady problem."

Color melts him. He makes yet another mental note to never again befriend a loudtalker.

They trail the border of the music shop, lets his ear be chattered off about Fender this and Matsumoku that, though he's never had the slightest interest in music besides the cute girls who belt it out. The original answer to him inquiring after the other's plans today had concerned the wad of bills Maizono had handed over with the request for a microphone cover slip (and _nothing else_ , the storyteller hadn't added but he can hear her voice ring through sans error, _I want my change this time, Kuwata, do you understand me?!_ ) which fingers graze the display of now for the perfect pick. "Alright, this one should work." He peers down to the plastic packaging in his hold, nods one solid measure. "She just wants to bedazzle it or some other lame shit anyway, doesn't matter too much what it looks like."

"Ah," is what he can muster as they dip forward toward the cashier, stopped a few paces short to receive a nudge, a smirk. Naegi feels a sudden urge to purge his stomach.

"Hello, how are you?" speaks Kuwata in crisp, unaccented English. The artificial blonde behind the counter lifts her nose to it, blinks a lick of confusion his way, yet he furthers, "I traveled here from New York with my son, his name is Mark." Despite hardly comprehending a syllable of what's said, the lean forward to talk a knuckle length from her face screams such faultless tourist Naegi could almost laugh. "He looks a little Asiany because he was adopted, don't worry about it. I am wondering how much money it is for this item here? What do you people use, yeng? How many of those would you like for this?"

Unwitting, the young cashier streams the same level of befuddlement as all the rest who fall below this grime. In the natural flow of their speech, she murmurs out, "I'm sorry, I can't understand you. ...Would you like to buy that? Um..." And she matches his language after a moment of thought to ask only, "Buy?"

Kuwata goes on with his rouse, whilst Mark stands in the cringe of accomplicehood. Really, he'd just like to ask the girl if they're hiring, though she's so busied by weaving through the glass plate conversation he doesn't think he'll be able to get a word in. It takes less back and forth than usual- the cashier snaps out an, "Okay, okay, just go! It's fine, take it!" after another minute or so, and Kuwata bows forward to ignite a flush over her complexion once he says in flawless Japanese, "Thank you very much! I'll come back for your number later."

His hot pursuit out the bell rattling entryway goes trailed in fever, before the worker's any chance to retaliate. Naegi slides inside Kuwata's car the as the engine begins its musty purr, and tire trails walk them far down the bending road with the getaway driver cackling the whole way. His passenger pouts into soreness of the heart.

"I don't like it when you do things like that, Kuwata," he mumbles, "You had the money to pay for it, you didn't have to mess with her like that."

"Yeah, but it's funny as all hell, ain't it?" he snorts, lifts one hand from the wheel to thumb through the bills from a pocket. "Lemme see, I'll leave Maizono a couple bucks as change, and split the rest with you for being such a good Clyde, how 'bout it?"

The car gallops over a lump in the street. Naegi's frown only etches deeper. "I don't want it, that's like stealing from the music store and Maizono at the same time."

Kuwata is at last able to drop his grin, salience grinding in the works. "Listen, Naegi, that was all mainly for your benefit. I know you got canned at work the other day, you need every bit of extra cash you can get your little hands on."

Another mention of money will more than likely be the push factor in his further life as a hermit beneath an overpass. His head shakes, huffing breath heavy past the tongue. "I'll be fine, Kuwata. Everybody's so worried about me- I can get a new job, I'm an adult, everything is fine!"

"You seen the job world lately, baby boy?" Kuwata cuffs, looks his way in a scoff, aims eyes back to the road ahead. "If I weren't so damn good at Major League bets, I'd have nothing to my name. I'm praying my pretty little pop star takes off soon, otherwise I don't know if I can keep this up." Sea salt rims his pupils. Naegi peers onward to him, where they're in the car together only them, and the cut runs deep enough down his sleeve to expose the valves, now, coasting beyond summertime to the life behind their lungs. Times aren't tough, they're _asphyxiating_ , and they're all just... _trying_ , even rough and tumble Kuwata, he sees, feels, drinks the humanity he so always clasps away for grace.

"Or maybe I'll find a rich cougar to take me in," he barks into humor, and there exactly is that grace that had never been missed. "Ever heard of those weirdo sites where old dudes'll pay you for feet pics and shit, too? I could eat a meatball sub in front of a webcam everyday and be living like the Nintendo guy within a week."

"Yeah..." His voice rings feeble, tugs his shirt collar to keep the gray from darkening, worse so once there's no open window breeze to kiss them in the stagnancy of 3F. Tiptoed around the litter, they claim now each a couch cushion, soda cans perspiring into carpet fibers to Kuwata's lean forward, elbows to knees thumbs to joysticks. He'd told his guest to hang tight while he finished up on the single mode character creation screen. Naegi had obliged to that twenty five minutes prior, idling in the light of his phone screen as he rests in his slouch. Electricity numbs his fingertips with every brush along the hairline cracks to browse. Scroll- scroll, not browse, because he's not seeking or searching any specific suitor among all the profiles beneath his touch, he's only killing time with this entirely ridiculous application.

_Tanaka Jin: Online in the middle of the day? You really haven't heard of a job, have you?_

Legs fold up beneath himself. Closely, he'd forgotten this particular schmuck. He selects the options in the corner, and sets himself to _offline_.

That seems solved enough, though...something, something.

_Shizuka: what about you? you had to be online to see me online_

Cheeeckmaaate. Naegi would smirk were his opponent not so swift on the keys.

_Tanaka: Yet I've never chosen to shake my ass for spare change. Attempt to best me again once you know true struggle._

The temper he doesn't have flares behind his eyes. Perhaps it's life as of late, as of always, stuffing him stuffing him stuffing him full of such unadulterated hardships- _struggle_ , it's nearly his wife, for fuck's sake, and Naegi Makoto is not one for lashing out, though frequent has the idea of negativity been brushed from him at all. He can be angry, irate, can stomp and scream and rip the fabric from the pillows. It's only that, well, volcanos don't erupt everyday. They require some buildup. A few days of putrid stinking hell will work well enough for that, so long as there's a prick on the other side of a screen to stir it all up.

 _Shizuka: i don't struggle??? but you don't know anything about me!!!!!. you don't know that i just got fired from my job or that my rent is getting raised or that my car broke down on the side of the road and i had to ask my best friend WHO HATES ME for a ride to see my other best friend's (by the way she's the one who made me this account anyway it wasn't even my idea)concert and then i didn't even get to see it all!!!!!!!!and my car almost got broken into last night by some random dude in a ski mask AND THATS ALL IN PAST FEW DAYS, THANKS FOR ASKING!!!!!!!!!!_  
Shizuka: also once my friend asahina let me come back behind the counter at the dairy queen she works at and when i turned my blizzard upside down it all fell out everywhere and it was just horrifying. And i puked on the teacup ride at an amusement park onetime and one time ranmaru ryuu copied my quiz answers but i got in trouble for it and he got the 74% that i deserved. also i have asthma. and a gap in my teeth.  
Shizuka: SO... MY LIFE KIND OF SUCKS? and why be on a website just to pay people for nothing if you don't even want to?????

"Uh, you okay, man?" brings him suddenly back to life, the one where Kuwata Leon's got Cheeto dust on his cheek and he's aimed a look of pure disgruntled concern his way, where he himself casts the shade of contempt in his every fiber; it melts from him now in one silky breath, to which he follows up, "Yeah, I'm alright, just...didn't get the Love Live card I wanted."

"I feel that," he sympathizes in a turn back to the television, blabbers about his task there near completion and to ready himself. Right. Naegi nods, though he's a moth to the lamp of a new message alert.

_Tanaka: Is that all?_

Hot to the touch. Naegi flushes spice and answers a quick positive. Were he alone, he'd gag on the shock of the reply.

_Tanaka: Link me your wishlist._

That's a new one, even if he's been a member of the community for a mere day or two. It's been always the sleek transaction into the account in his bio, a buy something pretty to match yourself hehehehe. He's said to the several of them, will do! and knows they're expecting the pretty pretty pictures as a follow up, but doubts in the same breath that they'll accept a jpeg of his cable bill receipt. There seems no slip through the cracks here, as this one's been daftless, he himself the bearer sole. He'll have to, foremost and first, create one to send, which goes about in toe tapping haste, then leave the space proceeding to wonder just what's played out. This man- he's the type to get his rockers off on a pretty little mutt barking back at him? It'd explain the attitude. Naegi tightens his teeth, adds another item useless outside sexual appeal to the list, and sends it off.

He awaits a response too long a while for patience's liking, cut between by an over the shoulder coughing to pick up the damn controller already. The devices are traded in a split. Sinking into Kuwata's dusty side of the road futon has always been a comfort to him, makes him woeless for the moment they sit beside one another, elbows nudging hyena howls flying to every digitalized victory. Kuwata slugs back half a Pepsi in one go. They're big huge men, adults, grown ups and all that, but it's still funny as all hell and back when he belches like a potbellied trucker and surges onward to a headshot KO. Quality guy time. Naturally.

Consciousness the next morning is the optimism policy; when one idiot is kicked awake in the ribs by his friend who is a girly's hot pink pump, another one blinks awake at the symphony of miserable groans.

"Sorry, I only meant to nudge you," Maizono says from above them both, passed out among blankets and snack wrappers on his apartment's living room floor. One dainty hand lay perched to her pocket book strap. Awakened more fully, Naegi is frantic to stuff the dirty magazine between them to live beneath the sofa. "You never brought me my mic cover yesterday, or answered any of my texts! I thought you died or something, jeez."

The carpet takes his muffled mumbled, until Kuwata shifts to his back, suave as ever even with the morning breath. "Don't worry, princess, I'm healthy as a horse. Me and Naegi just needed some bro time without you interrupting."

"I can see your nose hair from this angle," is all she says back, and clomps her heels over to the connected kitchen's center nightstand table. She peers at the new purchase's packaging a mild second before it slips into her purse, smile pressing to her fresh lip gloss. "Thanks for picking that up for me. You can keep whatever was leftover- I'm sure you spent it already, anyway."

"That's c'est la vie, Maizy baby," he calls after her. Naegi watches the both of her eyes swivel.

"I have to run, I'm meeting Kaede for brunch. Apparently some white idiot stole from her store while she was working the register yesterday." Blue satin brushes over one shoulder. Laughter stifles a foot from his head. "If you two bums ever get up, maybe we can hang out later. I'll see you guys, though, bye bye!"

Just as soon as the door clicks, hall echoes, Kuwata drops a fist to the ground to vomit chortling up the hatch. "Dude, you could totally see up her skirt too, right?"

He's sewn by the jagged stitch of nerves the whole way home. Had he the option he'd drag a tarp neath all his valuables to the farthest lot and camp there the rest of his nights. No job, no cell service, no indoor plumbing- truly the ideal life. But less bohemian is he to step back onto his home's lawn, left alone to fend for himself so long as he's able. He spares a passing glance to his own car on his tight stroll past it. Order has not been disturbed here. The coordinates to which it has, still, lay not far off.

Michio's curled his fat tabby body atop the stack of boxes on the side porch steps. Fingers to the fur disrupt his nap (to which he out lets a throaty mrowl that earns back an apology sincere through the core), make him hop and shake and dash off down the yard, never the most affable of the lot. With that barrier lost, Naegi takes to glancing over the mess of packages at his doorstep as he presses the key through the knob.

It's viable enough a distraction to keep his safety distanced from the mind. Palms to chin, the boxes are waddled inside, dropped to the living room floor, second trip gone to tug the plush Manila envelope from the mailbox tacked beside the door gone to a lock. It drops to the coffee table as he himself to the sofa. Scissors have already infiltrated the tape layer of the first package when it occurs to Naegi that he could very well be tossing open anthrax or detonating a bomb right under his nose. Cardboard flaps open before him. For a split second, he thinks he'd have preferred the implosion.

At the very least, were his house now in a trillion shrapnel bits, he wouldn't have to face such a humiliation that carries the lacy satin slip up by the shoulder straps. Altogether does it dawn just exactly where it's come from, and he had only added so much lingerie to make himself better fit the cookie cutter coquette that so frequents his newfound domain. He'd thought it might be an arousal killer to open up a cute young thang's registry and find it brimmed in action figures and Meiji candies (though he hadn't had the resistance to not stick a Pokémon thermos in the middle, the item he'd most quietly hoped would be the one sent his way). Not once had it crossed him that, as it appears after several more strikes of tape, the entirety of the list he'd sent off would appear at his door. Clothing lays to the bed to match empty boxes tossed to the foyer. Eyes to the gifts, he's bound in speechless silk well past any other touch, guides one to find his hip pocket and swipe his notifications open. None of them do him interest, only twice so by the lack.

_Shizuka Makoto: hey good morning...thank you for all the gifts...:-D_

It's so lackluster he can hardly bear it, but gratitude swells no less in his chest. He sets the device in a trade for a sheer laced top to sway between himself and the mirror. His mouth tips sideways; perhaps he could sell the goods to a thrift shop in town. First a few proof photos to placate John Doe, sure, though he's almost too hot in the face to consider slipping himself into any of it. The top drops back with the rest the same time his phone alerts him.

_Tanaka Jin: Don't flatter me. The next day delivery cost more than all of it combined._

He isn't sure what better he'd expected from this phantom.

_Shizuka: ah well, thank you for that too..  
Shizuka: .....do you want to see?_

_Tanaka: Your first instinct to repay generosity shouldn't be to show off your body. Take this advice._

_Shizuka: well....pardon me...  
Shizuka: it's kinda hard to take advice from a gray circle_

Pouting meets the conversation wall. This online stranger's just been more than kind to him, yet still demands putting up that stained glass front. Being refused so bluntly does his skin a burning as he awaits an answer, which arrives to shift the color to an all new rationale, where this stranger is no longer so strange to the disappearance of shadows aside the message.

_Tanaka: Satisfied?_

Where he'd alluded in the challenge by serendipity alone changes from gray circle to golden light. He's already harboring a blush to look over the image in its thumbnail state. Clicking to enlarge it tugs the marionette string on his jaw, because the perfect chiseled contours to either side of his face are chiseled and perfect, and the slice of blue for either eye behind lenses sharp- those are perfect too, as rests the halo of golden blond, the perfect handsome knuckles to which his perfect handsome chin rests in the photograph, and, and and and...and if he wasn't into men before, by _God_ , this would play the perfect conversion. Had he mentioned that-? Had he mentioned this perfectly ass brained stranger is perfect in his every physical aspect?

Or it could be just knowing he's loaded, that often does play a role in one's attraction. Though, Naegi can assuredly say to himself alone that this swan song would ring still as sweet without a cent.

_Shizuka: ...very._

The discussion feels concluded at that. And Naegi- he feels an end to himself likewise looming. He's essentially just gone and excused all the revulsion snarled his way for a handsome face, a single profile photo that's proved his demise. ...No logic jumps up to back him.

He's stopped in his tracks when his phone vibrates again, though it only works to halt him heavier.

_Tanaka: Wonderful. Since I've now done you so many favors it's only fair I get a valuable return.  
Tanaka: Give me your address._

If every last elementary assembly could stick with him it'd do him best. Don't ever talk to strangers- in fact, don't even _look_ at them, don't let them know your name and if anyone you've never seen before steps within a hundred yards, _run_. He thinks he's surpassed the golden rule already thus far, since a few hundred no names have drooled over his ass and thighs. So far a ways does it trail to give up the latitude? To such a handsome face, it sings all the more sound.

And over and over the argument strums within him. He's known him mere days, though that's better than just one, but is it truly at all knowing, well he'd bought him gifts, well he's good looking and almost charming, but well but- Ultimately his drippy little heart decides he's a grown adult with aspirations that exceed the bubble he's built. Maizono had said it aloud, even, live a little live a little! Perhaps he could live a lot. Perhaps he'll never again see light once his trusting nature drags an ax through the cerebellum. And who at all is he to invite a tip to tip well groomed business baby into his shack of a home? He doesn't exactly know the details of however this other man lives, yet can surmise the suit cuff round his wrist hangs not within a dirt floored closet. Further, too, he can imagine the fuss taken to it being brought home flaked in cat follicles.

Silence of the head is a precious metal. Something's on his tongue, something's in his flesh.


	4. Chapter 4

"Where does Dad hide the emergency key?"

He wishes he looked as vivacious as he had in the mall makeup kiosk.

Orange spills over the midweek evening. There's a wash of cold among the curling breeze, and he's zipping about the front porch steps to gaze along every cranny. Shoulder to ear, freed hands search within the doormat fibers, til his crouch unfolds to the call's second end murmurs. He begins to follow the guidance of her answer, same shade pacify the sudden yammering. "I just forgot my jacket here the other night. You said you'll be at Fukawa's all week? ...No, I'm not going in your room, Komaru- Alright alright! Go get the teapot, I'll talk to you later."

Click close clean. He ambles through the curve of the lawn round the bend of the house, because their father is a loon enough to place the front door spare key beneath a rock out behind. A thought to leave the bags in his hold on the porch never crosses him, so his teeth clamp the key steadied on his return until its dropped to a palm and he's thrown himself inside in time to spill vegetables across the kitchen tile. The rest of his cargo is set to the countertop whilst he's left to crouch for the mushrooms and white onion.

They drop into the sink's basin. He goes about unpacking the rest, folding the brown paper recycling the plastic, all to push farther away the next reveal. Chicken breasts set to granite.

To him, to only him and never another, the whole idea breathes a remarkable inanity. First he'd received a grocery list close to threatening and just _barely_ affordable to what he'd had on him, next up more precise instruction to what he's to wear as he dances all those exorbitant ingredients together into dinner for the wolf set to arrive any following minute. That lives just beneath the zip up shredding from him now, sneakers kicked away to earn old work khakis folded atop, at last garnering the will to expose bare flesh to his childhood home. Shoulders elbows wrists, hips ankles thighs. All of it- screaming out _hello, hello! I'm very nearly naked here!_ Though he still remains sole, the notion alone scars him pink.

The sheer fabric of a nyloned foot slips a bit on the cool tile; he catches himself by the counter's lip, catches himself in the stove back's reflective glass. Despite the scowling mouth, he could pass for attractive on some level. What with the low dip of skin showing betwixt his chest that fills out so nicely the lace at the trim, shoulders tank and garters tight. He wonders if the full black of it reads less classy as it was intended and more yankii goth. On the same leg, he wonders if goths wear such ass hugging panty bottoms.

So he's cooking soup in lingerie for some guy on the internet- don't all men do that at some point or another? He's halfway certain Maizono wouldn't advise him to make a date night out of a skeevy jerky philanthropist he's only talked to thrice, but Maizono's busy between the sheets of some red headed punk she tries so hard to hate, he's sure, so he needs his own bit of flare, too.

Knuckles to the front door make him think a night in with melon ramune and Mai-san's purrs is enough flare for him, but he's agreed to this and dear motherfucking God on Earth this bastard is ten times the delicious tempt in person. The first thing Naegi's eyes can focus on is that face of his. It shows not one signal of positive emotion. A sweat paints his nape. Below trails a trillion threads of the highest class unimaginable sutured together into a three piece suit, and he's adjusting the button of one sleeve without meeting the stare of the one who's just pulled the door open for his entry, until it is that timidity slips, "Ah...hi, Tanaka-san."

As it so happens, blue eyes are the most scathing shade. Ice settles upon his scant. "Spare me the obsequiousness. You know as well as I that calling me that is a pure mockery of my true form."

Hand to the door, Naegi blinks severest hard beats. "Obsequiousness..?"

The other claims a world-owning step inside the house, echoes shut the threshold behind them. "Ass kissing."

Oddity strikes him to find it he who plays the follower now, the guest making the four walls his own in a sharp toed clacking out toward the parallel kitchen. Naegi watches his gaze roam over the items spread along the counter, sweltering in his anxious prayer, watches his fingers grip the neck of a red wine bottle to scoff out, "I suppose it's adequate enough." That's all the cue he requires for permission to breathe, sucked up to tension over again when the wine pushes scrutiny instead down himself. "...Perhaps you'll merit the same praise if you can cook any better than every other ditzy lap warmer your age."

The comment alludes, as he sees it, to competition he must outlive. Never having prepared anything that can't merely be stuck in the microwave may hinder his overall points, just a tad.

"Preheat the oven," snaps him quick from contemplation. "One hundred ninety degrees. And be careful- lace is flammable."

From there on it relents not the slightest. Every next minute he's having barked to him either an order or critique, not enough salt on the chicken, too much salt on the chicken, slice the shallots thinner sauté the mushrooms watch the broth if it boils over everything's ruined. All the while he bustles about, wet neath the bangs and now thankful his fabric's so dark, he's leered at so closely he feels a night guard's flight risk.

Butter melts thickly into a pot housing vegetables; details like that make him wish to turn his nose up at his own creation. The dish had been titled some strange mess of letters he couldn't be begged to pronounce, but wine's a key component and his director is a six foot blond, so he deduces it is French cooking that he dodges through. Horrible, really. He spins a wooden spoon through chicken stock the most absently.

"Pour a cup and a half of Sauvignon into that pot," comes from over one shoulder, and he splits his gaze up to follow.

"Um...that's the wine, right?"

The tutting scoff bruises him yet again. "Yes. Cabernet Sauvignon, Makoto. Anyone with half a taste bud knows that flavor."

He complies easily to stirring in that cup and one half, riddled in pins up the palms the whole way. Something about a handsome man spitting out his name in such smooth sear- it drives him wild a moment. Worse does it patter, as being asked where a blush has sourced from is a sure fire way to darken it.

"N-Nothing!" He curses his own teeth for portraying him as the cliché subordinate soul. "...The steam's really hot."

Tanaka (he'd been told not to call him that, sure, but what in the world else is he meant to?!) stands with arms cross the chest, and Naegi could swear he'd been ten steps farther the last time he'd peeked. It doesn't bother him so much as it straightens his posture, perfects his wrist flicks as he stirs slower at the demand for it. He isn't sure why he's even let himself be roped into this. Tanaka commends his caramelization of the shallots. Maybe he should ask to make him dessert, too.

"So..." Another pad of butter swirls into the main mix. "What do you do?"

Just as quickly as regret is available, he claims it. " _What do I do?_ Are you truly attempting small talk with me after I've already had to stare at your close to nude body for half an hour?"

 _Had_ to- he's as hard shelled as he is long winded. Naegi offers no response aside from silent stirring. He feels no need to irritate him in a room full of cutlery and no witnesses. But the conversation flows on still, once he catches him push his glasses up from the corner of an eye, speaking crisp and clean for them alone. "I'm the head of a corporation. An internationally successful one. It's the reasoning behind why I haven't wanted my name to get out among such a...salacious community. Your forcing of me to slap my face on it was bad enough."

Having been able to force such a self proclaimed power into anything is a chin lifter to him. Vegetables go stirred into the broth to better simmer, and Naegi turns himself to face the other in a lean gainst the counter. "That sounds amazing- the first part, I mean. What company?"

"Yes, and have it splashed on every tabloid tomorrow morning that the world's most influential businessman is involved in a homoerotic scandal." His gruff scoffing trades for the thin of a smirk. "Though I don't suppose it'd do very well for you to find this house burned to the ground not ten minutes later. As long as we're aware of boundaries and consequences, I'll tell you. You're looking at the single prestigious power behind the entire Togami Corporation."

"Oh, wow," he marvels. "I've never heard of it before, but that's really-"

"You haven't heard of me? Do you live underground?" the other croaks back, pristine gleam about him lost for the first second the whole evening in his gawking. It all melds back together as he sniffs a breath in, and Naegi's caught writhing between the fork tong's of his glower. "How sad for you to be so uncultured. Check the chicken in the oven, it should be about done."

He checks the chicken in the oven. It's about done.

"So, that means your name is Togami then, yeah?" Fine knife cuts split the meat into strips. "...I like it."

He doesn't acknowledge the shadow cast over him, the breath on his neck. That's hospitality. His guest, too, doesn't, doesn't dignify his compliment by replying outside the touch that goes to wrist; halts his cutting, swallows his hand in one all the larger, colder, to grasp upon the handle with him. "You'll ruin it cutting that way, it takes out all the moisture."

Chest pressed to his back, Naegi dare not move outside his taut swallow. "Ah- isn't it going into broth, though?"

Above him sounds a tetchy click of the teeth. Togami (ah, so that's it) is precise to every last cell, guides his hand into severing the meat into identical pieces one by slow practiced one. He's so strapped in awe at the chicken pieces that he's hardly any notice to the self appointed teacher's second hand going to rest at his hip's curve. That's- that's alright, this meeting holds no first date standards, very evidently. A little touching is no deal at all, and he quite thinks he'd revel in a hard kiss on the mouth, a toss back on the counter to rough fuckery from this man he knows not. The first of many, he'll deem it, because he's starting to live a little, because he's craving a cigarette and a dozen faceless men in his bed a dozen nights consecutive. Would his mother approve? Well, so long as it's not here on her kitchen counter.

"You're surprisingly competent for such a counterfeit," goes hot to his skin. He's curling up a moan until the words process past surface value.

"Counterfeit?" He frowns. "Well...yeah, I'm not really... _like_ this at all. It was all my friend's idea, like I said. I'm usually just...normal. Usually. Um..."

"Not what I was referring to," bites a smirking back. The knife slides from dual ownership to singleton. Its edge pushes the contents of the cutting board into the simmering pot, Naegi gazing on as his guest takes to stirring a languid measure. Pepper sprinkles from his fingertips. Stir spin spin.

"The mailbox," Togami says to him after some while that way, silent puppy dog nonplus. And he laughs now, a short gelid echo, "If you're going to hide behind a pseudonym, at least be sure to choose a surname for a surname."

Cringing into himself, the spotlight stings. "...You caught onto that, huh? Eheh... My friend- Maizono, she did that part too. Just the surname. I really am Makoto." Yes, he is aware just how much of an idiot he's sounding in these rambles that trip over their own feet. A shake runs knee to neck. "I was just nervous to have my full name on there. And so were you, so we're even."

"So said the Inquisition to Galileo." Before he's even the chance to misunderstand, the scrape below his chin is tickled by a chef's blade flat, tilts him upward to kiss at the gazes. "I don't play to reach a tie, Naegi Makoto. My hand shall be upper or I will have no hand at all. Comprende?"

He's backed himself into a bend against the counter, thinking better of nodding in the nick of time to save a nick of time. "Y...Yes."

A moment of staring, and the weaponry pulls back to set upon the counter, and Togami's smirking a handsome storm in his straight shouldered way of life again, and, well, he himself's been nudged quite close to on edge now if he was not beforehand. Gleams run over the blade's reflection. Togami moves to switch places.

Compliance is hesitant, though all the same wouldn't be dreamt of a falter. The heartthrob's leaning tall to the counter where he just had whilst he guides smoothly the spoon around the pot. Its contents spell anything but appetizing to him. He's never been one for cuisines cross the border. His own opinion doesn't matter so much, he assumes, entirely so doesn't think this night much about the meal itself to begin with. He feels the fabric slip a fraction down one thigh.

"If you're still so set on seeing eye to eye with me, I'll let you know I'm not much for this type of deal either." Arms and ankles lay to folds, relaxed now without a startling tight.

Naegi blinks over toward him. Small talk? He dare not be so fresh. "You mean, the dating site thing?"

"Could hardly call it that," he snorts in derision. Two fingers prod the center to his lenses. "I've never cared to waste my time on whatever pyramid scheme lay behind a panty shot. Though...I suppose the form I take now is only human, and that does mean I have certain desires, as any man would..."

Naegi would swear this human form sizzles at the ears' tips _just_ the most subtle. ...Cute. He works the spoon another length until he's drowned in Burberry and the burner is clicked off past his head. "It's done."

Knowing he fumbles to recall which cabinet the bowls are kept in is only a slight misstep on Naegi's part. Because the rest is a rehearsed fluidity, serves his overseer dinner at the square table off the side, where he takes the seat across from him in only the smallest twinge of rue. For so, his only thing to chew on is the awkward mush of watching another eat, and something he himself has prepared on top of it, leaves him in the limbo of wondering his own adequacy whilst the silence drags on. The soup is disappearing gradually by the inch, which makes him guess in education that he's performed well.

That urges the confidence enough to consider dinner conversation. (He'd had a knife tip to his throat not twenty minutes prior, but it had been in theatrics, he's sure this man has kind enough intentions). "So...what made you choose me of all people?"

He's dabbing a napkin corner to his pouting mouth, all the natural all the cover model, as he goes to speak. "You were the first one to answer my messages."

"The only one?"

The thin to his glare is response enough.

After quiet grips them, Togami treads, "I will admit you being my quote unquote _type_ was a factor as well." He sips coolly from his water glass. It sets back placid. "That isn't to say there aren't a million other short skinny men in Japan who look like they can hardly tie their own shoes. But you've managed to hold my attention thus far. You're lucky."

"Lucky," comes through a nibble to the lip, "Ha...I don't think I've ever been called that before."

"Well, get used to it," Togami tells him as he lifts his spoon again. "Since I plan on getting far more out of you, you're now in the position countless others have prayed for their whole pitiful lives."

More. Naegi ponders upon that meager word, whether it should hold true to an extension or to this night alone, whether he'd like the same. He wonders wonders wonders what he'll do once his parents return- _hey, Mom and Dad, could you guys clear out for the night so I can invite over this guy I met online who I tricked into believing this is my house? thanks!_ No, he doesn't think that plane will quite fly.

Likewise, he has to think upon what type of relationship he yearns for here. Romance feels out of the question, very obviously. That much had been made clear once the man he's talked to thrice gunned down equilibrium. Something despite it all has kept him at a level of comfort with him. A taste of familiarity that just the same twists citrus in his drink he's never before known. Words have fallen from him in the ease of old friendship; he's hot in the face an hour past asking the waitress for a refill, yet can somehow carry eloquence in full sincerity now. Togami is...a new fruit, yes, just as he'd compared.

Clouds melt from his eyes in a shake, finds himself staring forward still, hands flat before him and bare skin shivered. Naegi tilts his head to rest atop one fist, and says to him, "How was the soup?"

Spoon set dripping to its napkin, Togami swipes invisible lint from the lap of his pants. The bowl rests emptied between them. "Bland."

Starshine glimmering along his nose, Naegi offers a thin smile forward.

* * *

Mirror shine bats back a mother's censure. He watches her every motion in caution.

"When I said live a little, I didn't mean get yourself killed the next day."

Overhead, the lights dance in glee along white tile, racks, shelves, clearance. Emotions all pit for number one within him. Most prominent as he watches her ankles beneath the dressing room door, anticipation. Most prominent as he goes to answer her tutting, fever.

"I know it's kinda weird, but I thought he was...actually pretty nice." One leg jounces in absent rapid release. "He won't kill me. Probably."

From beyond the stall sounds a scoff that rattles his head. The next echo is the click of the door pressing open, where she slides her sandals out into the open area he waits in. "Just be careful, Makoto, okay? There's tons of weirdos on the internet, believe me. How does this one look? I think I really like the gold obi."

While the department store doesn't hold the most grandeur in yukata selection, she'd asked him to go with her as her most trusted pair of eyes, and, honestly, she can rock any fabric, no matter the polyester percentage. One thing that catches him in particular is the sight of those ankles again, bared up the shins knees bite of thigh- he presses his own together.

"...It's nice," he nods. Her smile in response is tugged off instantly by the second option thrown from their left.

"Is that a yukata or a tee shirt?" hoots out. "I think you're missing some fabric there."

"Oh, shut it, Kuwata," she scoffs back, fingers still poised to that high risen hem. "I just folded it up for now, but Kaede has a friend who's really good at sewing, she makes all sorts of costumes and nerd stuff. I'll have her tailor it for me, it'll look way cuter then." She twists herself this way, that, to admire the mirror behind her, the pin up of hair into a loose waving tail. Naegi envisions the bright pink blossom stuck within it to match the dress' pattern. "Plus, how do you expect an idol to dance on stage with my legs all cramped up? Plus plus, I don't want to look like a stuffy old lady on my birthday. Adorability is always in style!"

"Yeah, according to Naegs and his new boy toy."

Misery twists a groaning. "Are we really back on that..?"

From his spot to the wall lined benches, Kuwata shifts himself just aside the other to yammer into his face. "I just can't get over it! You know a guy, what, two days? And then all the sudden he's over at your house for dinner? Did you do a little dance for 'im too?"

"I bet he wore lingerie," echoes out taunting from back within the stall. Pink fabric pools around her feet.

Kuwata's all snorting laughter as their subject sits festering in heat. "...It was just a date, okay?! Everybody goes on dates."

"Makoto, I'm only teasing!" Maizono swears once she's ducked out to them again with her purchase over one arm. A woman clicks her heels into a derisive glance their way before carrying an outfit past a door down the row. With his friend's focus drawn back to him, she smiles in pure benevolence. "I think it's great that you found a boyfriend! Or a sugar daddy, but tomato tomahto. Let's go check out."

A trio, they trail from the store's very back up through to the registers. As if he weren't already unsettled enough by setting foot into this place (something about tin foil and grill lines- he cringes internally) but he's left to think on how his friends both view him now as such an alien outside their window panes. The mere concept of a blind date isn't the oddity they've pinpointed, he knows, though most presently, his personal bizarre factor is Maizono's spilling. Boyfriend. Oh, do his guts clench.

"Hey, spot me this Rice Krispie Treat, will ya?" he hears as they stand at the edge of the conveyer. "I'm staving to death here while you drag me around to do all your girly things."

Maizono plucks the package from his hand to scan over the listed ingredients before handing it back to him. "There's gelatin in that. That's made of horse bones."

"Damn it, Maizono, you're turnin' us all into pansies. I'm dying for a goddamn hamburger." Bucking surliness from the exhale, Kuwata tosses the snack back to the shelves of last minute check out enticers. Naegi's tuning them both back out in a fade, only catching a last note, "Wait, Cheetos are vegan, aren't they? I know it's _cheese_ , but still-"

He runs his gaze along the rows of registers around him. One o'clock Friday has never been his shift, normally, as it sits the prime clock in for the get-it-out-of-the-way type, glee flecking about once the two to eight crowd comes to take their places. Every step makes him flinch his eyes to its direction, awaiting the cat clicks of five inch stilettos to chase him. The next ones come from the shopper just ahead of them in line, who sweeps her carriage and the noisy toddler within it toward the exit doors.

Cleared to go forth, Maizono lay her clean tagged yukata and handful of other glamor to be beeped along. The hand on the scanner leads up to a familiar look that locks with his a moment, and he can thank every God that Hinata never cared enough for him as a coworker to ask anything of his outside life nowadays, lets his bored stare drop back to his customer. "Thirty five eighty two. Do you have a rewards card."

Kuwata's mouth is covered in eggless kewpie within the next six minutes.

They're seated in a corner booth of an isolated family manned diner that shares a plaza with Target. Naegi drums his fingers to the table top, peers out the window reflecting his hue of dolor. Perhaps that. Though he can't be quite sure what he feels or has the last two days or last twenty years. For certain, he'll stab a red check through the box marked confusion.

Mouthful of his second mayo filled onigiri, the one across the table offers, "Hey, Naegi. You look like shit. Something bothering you?"

"Oh, leave him alone, Kuwata, he's probably upset that we picked on him before," tuts Maizono after she's swallowed a scoop of white rice. Another grain flecks to the side of her cheek once Kuwata takes to a straining cough. "The hell did I do?!"

She wipes her sleeve across her face just _so_ ladylike, scowls at him heavy. "You're going to get food on my new yukata. Come on, Naegi, will you help me bring this stuff to the car?"

He lifts his chin from a palm. A measly two shopping bags separate their hips on their side of the booth. It doesn't deter him from agreeing, and he's got one in either hand after sliding out to trail her bonking the third with an order to watch the table. A princess blue Subaru sits in park several yards off. Her father had surprised her with it for her twentieth birthday. Click click.

"Hey, sit with me a minute? I wanna touch up my makeup." The backdoor shuts after he's placed gently the bags within, where now he goes to nod, tugs the passenger side to swallow himself as she does the driver's. Watching her from the corner of an eye is all he can scrape together. Looking her dead on would feel it literal.

Gloss smooths to her bottom lip in the visor mirror. She's his best friend and all, but anyone in her place would crimp his nerves. He's just waiting, waiting for her to say whatever she's got stored up in her chest. His hands feel the need to fold within his lap.

"I know Kuwata asked before, but is anything really bothering you?" Those lips pop once. "You can tell me whatever's on your mind."

Hm...truly? Because he thinks he'd have to start with knowing what's on it first. Rather, it shakes. "I'm okay. A lot has just been going on lately, but nothing worth worrying over."

"Mhmmm..." She's enthralled more by the swipe of a brush up her lashes, though does spare him rightful focus in time. "I understand. And, hey- I really meant it, I am happy about your new guy friend. I know I was being bitchy at first, but as long as you're happy, so am I." Next goes the liner along one lid. Naegi is drawn into a calm by her words, her lapping tides for eyes. And in the next second do they twist into sea storms. "Did you invite Kirigiri to the Tanabata fest?"

"Uh..." He wets his own tongue. "Was I supposed to?"

A pucker replaces what could so easily be a sigh. "Well, I think it would be good for you both to spend some time together again. I can't stand knowing she won't come to see me perform just because you'll be there, too."

He has to wonder just how selfless a meddler she is. Though it takes the burner behind the one that now simmers fate, and all the components to build up to it, as that's how he views life in order to keep a grasp on sanity. Everything that happens must. He _must_ live in a one bedroom postage stamp. He _must_ have forty cat scratches beneath the sleeves from dragging Kevin back home by the scruff. He _must_ be falling into a downward spiral of deceit from the lips to save himself at every other turn and cost what little good he knows.

Some sort of halfhearted promise to contact her is murmured out. The snap of her powder compact forces his stare widened.

"How do I look?" she asks him, facing one another past the center console.

He glances along her tucked up hair, the porcelain skin below it, far too low for a gentleman's eyes and back up to her face. All done up again to the perfection it never lost. "Yeah," he says, then blushes hot to her fingertip giggles. "I mean- I mean you look good. Sorry..."

"Don't worry about it." That's her immediate mend, soft in all the wrong places to a hand that curls over his shoulder so sudden. The glitter of her lids folds deeper into the center. "I thought it was cute."

When her mouth meets his, his instinct is to obey. They twin a mild while, til she's bold Maizono Sayaka, up and coming pop sensation, dipping a tongue unto his, bobbing themselves back, forth, in the front seats of her Subaru's Target lot parking space, breathes in the summer sweat of her neck, the life within her so fresh and so fleeting. It is he who parts from her, worried for a future sight of a top stripped off, and he does not act so gaudy as to pant and shout, rather leans to the seat as she tugs the mirror back down to adjust the pins in her hair.

"...Why'd you do that?" he _must_ ask at last, once she's tucked herself preened and they're placed up beside each other just the same.

Maizono, turned inward to him all delicate, smiles, "Because we haven't in a while."

And her lean in toward his spinning head is neat, yeah, but he can in a certain sense better appreciate the knuckle taps to the window behind his head. When he pushes the door open, "Alright, we gotta screw outta here quick, the waiter in there is convinced I'm out here to get my wife to translate for me."

Kuwata wastes no time clamoring in through that same open door, shoving Naegi into a crawl between the front seats to land himself along the back bench. A seatbelt buckle digs into his tail bone.

Up front, Maizono slaps the visor shut, hands pretty to the steering wheel's top. "You damn idiot," she snorts in laughter, reversing from the space and smirking harder when his hand reaches to tap the sunglasses down her forehead onto her batting lashes.

Naegi remembers stopping in that hole in the wall restaurant during a lunch break or two. Their curry left behind two days of vomiting, and he'd tipped twenty five percent because the grandparent duo working in the kitchen had had the kindest caramel eyes a world will ever know.

The car rips out onto the road. He manages to sit himself rightways, life glazing outside the windows. One dips down for Kuwata to hang an arm from. Wind skitters along the shopping bags in the back seat. Their sound reminds him of drives home post shopping trips with his mother (the ones with Komaru fussing in her car seat, but he'd sat quiet and well behaved because he was an astute enough first grader to know that's what earns the karinto they'd picked out in aisle seven).

"What are you guys doing tomorrow?" Maizono wisps into the rear view mirror. "I'm thinking about a beach trip."

Distraction bites his lips closed. He can't recall anything about tomorrow or today or the one before, only the now where his hip swallows a buzz, heart takes a scanning.

_Tanaka Jin: Why is your profile still activated?_

Quite the opener. His eyebrows twin, typing back a swift reply.

_Shizuka Makoto: .....idk?_

_Tanaka: You don't know. How eloquent.  
Tanaka: Deactivate your account, you don't need to attract the attention of anyone else._

_Shizuka: i mean i still need to make rent..so..._

_Tanaka: Let me see you again tonight and I'll fulfill that tenfold._

_Shizuka: are you jealous or something?_

Togami, in Naegi's brief experience, is the most complicated straightforward person on the planet. The question hangs long enough for his phone to lock, place back to his pocket and slips back into reality around him. Kuwata's bitching something fierce about the personal enemy he's made out of hotel chains and their stupid overpriced nuts and nips (which even in the midst of raging he cannot help a pause to giggle at) while Maizono waves him off with a hand to spill beyond it, "You agree with me, right, Makoto? One night in a hotel in Chiba, spend some time at the beach and drive back on Sunday. It'll be great!"

"Oh-"

And a vibrating.

_Tanaka: I'll be over at eight._

"...Sure."

"Ah, fine," grumbles the third. "Guess I'm in too, then. I don't own a bathing suit, though. You'll all have to just enjoy the view."

Maizono rolls her eyes in a turn onto a side street.

His time at home is a brief two step. Swallow half a glass of milk (subsequently dump the spoiled milk carton down the drain and chug a juice pouch instead), pour water and kibble into the bowls outside, check that his door is locked, pet Michio, get bitten by Michio, ow ow, remember that he's left his wallet inside, unlock the door to slip back in (check that all the windows are locked- alright, perfect), latch the lock again, pet Sachiko, tumble his way into the front seat of his own car and most certainly make a mental note to stop at a gas station on the way. Only after he's already hit the road does it dawn on him that dawn is nowhere in sight, and he's still hours left before his suitor is scheduled to barge on in. He continues forth despite it. Best to be prepared, best to be prepared.

He skins his knee traipsing about to retrieve the key from beneath the rock. Could he only take a breather, it'll all be okay, because it all will be okay. So long as Mister Macho doesn't stay the night, and everything's back in perfect order before his parents arrive home tomorrow, it all will be okay. Breathe.

Over the arm of the couch, he drapes himself, bandage stuck to the fine hair of his kneecap and eyes stinging behind their lids.

There'd been no special instructions for this meeting. No strictly blueprinted course of action, grocery lists or flamboyant outfits to don. He hopes the prestigious power behind the entire Togami corporation doesn't mind a deodorant stained graphic tee and cargo shorts.

Once the street lamps begin to pulse, his ribcage flutters. Those hours he'd still held dwindled down to mere bone by his pacing, tapping. A shower in the middle had done him well, though it'd been cut dreadfully short once he recalled the night he and Kuwata had lost all sound from the mind to Hitchcock's corroded fantasy. By the time he's knotted over headlights up the drive, his hair has dried to the roots, and he's twice as wet beneath the bangs.

(The one thing his parents never sprung for was air conditioning, but he supposes it's too late for that since the door's being knocked at).

Sharp ocean tears him up and down, and the first thing Togami says to him, "There's a blood stain on your sock."

"Ah," he gasps the slightest in a glance downward. "I cut my knee earlier, I guess it dripped. But, come-" The pause is not so much voluntarily as it is forced by the interruption of his push inside. "...in. Okaaay..."

"Hot as all hell in here," his guest gripes as they stand amid the living room. Naegi offers sympathy in a nodding. "Yeah, sorry about that. We could open up a few windows. Want me to take your jacket?"

His only response is a harsh snap of a glare his way. He slinks backward, tail warming the thighs.

"Um, alright," he tries anew. "Can I get you anything to drink?"

"You can shut that mouth of yours and allow me to cut to the chase," Togami decides instead. The cuteness would strike him were it not for the savior of his reach into an inner pocket. Naegi's only ever seen so much money altogether at once in those vintage Western movies, where the bad guy ends up with the attaché full of explosives by mistake whilst an unsuspecting businessman clicks open a case of cash. It isn't quite that much that he proffers outward now, yet in his scraping by vision it may as well be twice that. "I don't know how much you pay to rent this shoe closet, but I assume this should suffice for a while. And," the slap of the stack against the coffee table nearly echoes, and he's only done so to free his hand to pull out a sleek gray card. "Paying bills of any kind with this is prohibited. You'll use this on yourself only, to buy whatever shiny thing catches your eye in the moment."

The two fingers surrounding it extend forward, and when Naegi has stripped himself of enough stun to each for it, the card is clasped far back away from him. A smirk tugs him. "Only after I receive some payment myself."

Lush forests splay wide to his insinuating. "What, like... _sex?_ "

The way he's hissed it as though the most salacious scandal to ever be thought up- he'll admit even that that's rather _silly_ of him. Togami finds agreement.

"Prostitution is illegal, Makoto." He's perched himself to the edge of the sofa, tucking the card back where it came and smoothing his suit coat back neat. "In reality, you're the only one gaining from this. Not only am I funding your livelihood, but should you consent to what you've just so crudely proclaimed, you'll be numbed with delight for the rest of the year."

Togami's walks the fine, fine line between twisted and tangled. Allowing an exhale, Naegi places himself on the couch beside him, lifting the banknotes from the coffee table to examine them in utmost awe. This alone will save his goddamned life. He wonders how long it took to make, thirty two seconds? Rich people terrify him.

It is placed in a stretch to the arm of the couch, wound careful in its band round the middle. "I can't thank you enough for this. I'm still kind of shocked, to be honest, eheheh." Deaf ears drink it. Naegi follows the trail of Togami's silent stare back toward the table before them, wood top hardly visible beneath a quarter of a sail boat along the ocean, and five hundred centimeters of it splayed out along the table in a diabolical mess. "Oh, the jigsaw puzzle? My dad sets those out all the time, and he never finishes them. Uh- I don't know why he has to do it at my house of all places, though."

Togami refrains from providing an answer. Ever the most cautious, meticulous, he leans forward, selects a piece between two narrow fingers, clicks it into place with an index.

"Tell me about your parents," he says, continues on picking up puzzle pieces for examination. Naegi can't say he would have ever expected to be taken a deep interest in by this man, though he doesn't hesitate in fulfilling his every command, no matter how gentle.

"They're the nicest people in the world," is his opening statement. His gaze wanders along the thin cardboard oceanside in his lean backward. "My dad works in sales, and my mom has always been stay-at-home to take care of me and my sister. We had a dog growing up too, Haruki. He was a golden retriever, my dad had a thing for exotic animals at the time. He does that a lot, y'know, has these weird little dad phases. Fishing, sudoku, jigsaw puzzles." The top to the sail begins to take form, fingers working at a marvelsome pace. "Um...my mom is a really great cook. She makes the best chocolate chip muffins ever. And she really loves us, so much. I bet she'd love you, too. But- um, what about your family?"

He thinks he deserves cotton stuffed in his mouth for all he's palavered. Slipping into such lax as to relay a sort of hoping for a future they shan't have has proven maladroit in his head, though the matter darkens worse once the other takes salted lips to the questioning.

"My family...that's not your business, hardly even my own." The phrasing comes off twice as harsh as the semi sweet cocoa of a tone. Togami presses a cloud formation together beneath his thumbs. "The Togamis are a family that rules the world. That is the extent of what you need to know."

"Oh..." His lips flatten. "Well, what about you? I'd like to know more about you."

"I bet that you would," is the entirety of his answer, enthralled by puzzle pieces alone. Naegi huffs an idle sigh.

Resting in quiet such a while would on other occasions bounce impatience through him. For the now though, it's exactly that- resting, beside the warm honey presence of someone he's known less than a week and would more than likely slaughter him at the first faulty move. Togami. Togami Byakuya, the name on that card he'd had taunted in his face, he'd been sure to catch. All his strength goes into repressing the wavering smile that threatens him. Adorability is always in style.

Only does he realize how long he's spent fantasizing of their lips locked once the real life models are inches apart. Togami sits boldly now, looking over him, no particular emotion detectable if present. His hands lay flat. He's the butter pecan sundae menu photographers scramble for a shot of.

"If you're truly so nosy, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to give a bit up," reminds Naegi that he'd asked anything at all, though he urges him on in nodding regardless. "...I run a business. I live in the middle of Tokyo. My en suite bathroom is about twice the size of this house." A fingertip pads his bottom lip, thinking scrawled across his expression, before it all falls away to hands in the lap and deadpan on the face. "I don't like dogs unless they've been trained for a purpose. Cats I can live with so long as they don't shed or piss on anything. That's all."

"That's all?"

Togami adopts a scowling. "Yes, I've already said far too much. I don't appreciate that you've somehow manipulated me into such a trusting state."

His frown is matched a moment, before Naegi shrugs into air below the wings. "Maybe it's because you've seen my ass already."

To follow it, the only giggling belongs to himself. Togami stares on blankly, prompting his hand to pat the tight muscle of the other's thigh. "Come on, I'm just trying to lighten the mood a little- oh, sorry."

His hand pulls back into his own territory quick as a lick. He supposes they've both grown too comfortable, trusting, as it had been put, in too short a span. The _look_ he's to endure next assures him of his boundaries at the very same time they are invaded; Togami leans in a magnetic pull to that hand, stops where they've got just enough breathing room to themselves. And there's no lowering of the lids, no dreamy blush eating up his face. Very simply it is Togami Byakuya leant there, a skinny inch from him, handsome and uncouth as ever before.

After some while, no longer can he stand the tease, not once a tongue has skimmed lips so tantalizing, and Naegi moves himself to fill the sunder but finds his motion copied and conquered. Really, it should not matter who's made the move, because they're kissing, warm yet juvenile, two hands shifting to order him more near. Chest touching chest. Their mouths part to open air some milliseconds between reconnections, and Naegi has no idea when the kiss has transcended to make out, but he does know for sure that the muffled moaning hadn't come from his guest.

"Don't you think we're moving a little too fast?" he asks the palms that cup his thighs.

Against his neck, the other answers, "There is no _we_ to move." A length of his skin sizzles beneath a lick. "Take me to your bedroom."

From where he's sat in a straddle of his lap, Naegi would beg to leave no obvious trace. He stands, manages it, he stands and he walks with a shadow trailing. He's quick to grab the gift on the couch's arm and slip it into the pocket of his coat as they pass the doorside hooks to round the stairs. Gaining those steps proves trepidation manifested in the soles.

The very last second is his sharp switch to the right of the second floor, as he thinks better than to bring a date into a room with star stickers on the ceiling. Where shall better befall-? He knows it, because he's already got his hand round the knob to his parents' room, but it isn't without a tight grimacing of the mouth he prays remains hidden. It isn't that he's not got that excitement in his back pocket over what comes next, mainly is it following through on it in the bedroom his most fond memories of consist of tiptoeing in to tell his mother he'd wet his own bed ( _again, Makoto?_ ). Just- _yugh_ , picturing any of this is the perfect slash through arousal, rather he allows only his sight to set on the one prowling his way, once the door is closed and the lamp is dim and the comforter beneath him now is plush and plastic smelling, so he supposes it's never been present for anyone else's _deeds_. Again, he's dry as an ancient oak, focus on the one climbed atop him, focus on the clicking of a belt, kisses on the throat.

Oh, that'll work. Teeth graze against his skin, extract a mewling already. They part to allow Togami up upon his haunches, draws his slacks down the thighs to an overly alluring sight, black fabric beneath taut to his hot working flesh. A finger hooks his shirt's hem, and he takes it as an order for removal. Nothing could stop him from giving in.

Bareness calls forth the flush of intimacy, chests nude down to the thudding within, lips to his jaw palm strong to his back's arch. "Delete your account," husks into ear. "I'll send you my phone number and a million a month."

Naegi isn't sure from that what causes his moan, but his eyes close laxed and he's nodding, nodding, and the strip of his pants to the carpet is a royal flush row when he'd bet the bank. Their kiss casts fire all through him.

His skin still burns a twelve hour turn around.

He's only able to wake at all for his forgetful fingers along last night's curtains. Sunlight pinches his eyes into a squint, shifting breaths to match the open morning calm. That serenity cradles him a meager minute's length, as he finds soon truth to it closer, weighted, wrapped in an arm cross his chest, soft sleep against his shoulder. It'd be awkward in itself to nudge him awake in the den of his own sheets, play forth and back the tango of uncertainty, shame. Within the now, he slips himself freed, decapitates his panic to note the nightstand clock still blinks a morning hour. His parents wouldn't land back until evening musk hits. He supposes it won't be so much a crime to allow time further together, if only the slightest, and he supposes it's good manners to turn on the percolator.

For candor, he remembers bits and pieces of the night before, enough to rock a jolt through his stomach as he's tugging his shirt over it, though missing the hazy lore that had led to their nod off clasped against each another and the sweat the sheets. No matter, it's happened, it's done, and as much as he's enjoyed the nightlife, he's careful in the quiet quiet latch of the door behind him.

"Makoto?"

His yelp almost echoes. He slaps a palm over it, but lifts it soon back to wisp, "Komaru? What- What are you doing here?"

At the hall's second side, she's poised within the plush of pajamas still, backpack over the shoulder, just as much surprise mirrored on her face before it switches to insolence. "I live here, dumb butt. Why are _you_ here? Did you go in my room?"

Frantic to the joints, he begs her voice hush. "I just spent the night here because...uh, a cat threw up on my bed," he winces. "I wasn't expecting you to come back until later, like, when Mom and Dad were home."

"Well, you were right," says the tongue that jabs toward him. "Auntie Mina is on her way with them now, so-"

"What?!" And he's to chide his own volume now, but more pressing, stop the boggle of his pinballs for eyes and find a clear thought.

Komaru coughs a chortle. "What's the matter? Did you pee Mom and Dad's bed or something?"

He flattens into displeasure. "Nothing, just, uh- I'm gonna go get my stuff out of there. Why don't you go in your room and unpack? I wanna hear all about your time with Fukawa afterward, ahaha."

The strange suspicion in the look she shoots him is ignorable, moving into the slimmest crack he forms by the push open of the door behind him as she takes to vanishing through her own. On instant, the heartbeat pulsing his throat quickens to find his frazzled gaze is met.

Upon the perfectly made bed, Togami sits perched as though backed by velvet, tucking socks into oxfords by the ankle lip. He says null to their locked eyes, rather turns back to the task whilst Naegi stands in the limbo of stun and scramble. He takes to the second once his bearings regenerate.

"Uh- h-hi, good morning," he says, shoving his legs into last night's bottoms. "Um, would you mind-?"

"Leaving before your parents arrive home and realize their bum of a child has snuck a fuck in?" His foot presses flatly to the carpeting, standing with hands to the lapels. "Shall I climb out through the window as well? That would really complete the sordid teen drama fantasy, wouldn't it."

"Togami, I'm so sorry about this. Just- I promise I'll explain everything and make it all up to you, I _promise_." He's stumbled into his own shoes now, peeks his nose into the hall before ushering the other's crass disposition forward.

For such a size Togami proves a pleasant surprise in his silence down each step. Naegi skips down just ahead of him, stealing a glance back up the staircase to melt the most idle calm over him.

"Hey," he says quick as the door is being tugged. Equal parts, they pause, Togami spotting a scowl down to his call while he himself slides one note closer enough to place touch at his elbow. "I'm sorry, really, um- Are you...are you upset?"

Beyond the threshold of the front door, morning light and nature smooth chimes bow toward them. Togami glances toward the park of his car in the drive, then back toward the question's hanging mouth. Naegi swallows a dry note. Time drags claws down his flesh, and he's about ready to push him out that open door when lips meet his own one quick press and they're standing both straight once again with the thin of a bank card slipped into his hand.

"I'll see you soon," he says, making another step outward.

Naegi dials into relief shoving ecstasy, and he's ready to nod and wave him off with his long pulled beaming, though interruption comes in her nastiest form from the staircase's crest.

"I knew you were up to something bad!" bolts his sister's chiding down at him, yet she's smirking the whole way her socks pummel to meet them. "Makoto snuck his boooyfriend iiin-"

"Alright, bye, see you later!" The door slams closed so swift a finger caught would be freed, leaves the two of them sole in the front entry's path. He collects himself a moment enough for breath, as he knows he'll need it in the chase he takes next. Komaru yelps a screeching at his first step toward her, picking up steam just as soon as he yells back to her, "Don't run away from me!"

It's the kitchen where she truly excels; socks slid across the length of tile beat his pounding sneaker bottoms for time, and she's out of his reach as they take the adjoining dining section. She skirts herself around the table, bobbing this way to his that, that to his this, until sprinting off with the tug of a chair out into his middle. The trail leads her back to where they'd begun, tucked behind the bottom railing to the stair just before the front entry, eyes shifting, pulse damning, and she's only so dim as to not take her elder brother for a sportsman, or else she would have accounted for his leap through the open counter cutout to the living room's side, feet landing to the couch cushions one step before he's got her in his clutches. Her size over him does no good in the face of adrenaline; he's pinned her at the wrists to the floor beneath, knees bent to her either hip in what she's taken as nasty nasty punishment her whole life through.

"Don't tell Mom and Dad!" is his first demand. He's sure she'll be so experienced as to not open her mouth _now_ , which she follows, responds to him only with the vehement shake of her head either way. A scream sounds muffled from behind those pinned lips at the first sight of saliva trailed from above.

" _Okayokayokayokay!_ " The relent only comes at the closer, closer dip of the trail, and it zips back up into its home in fairness to the deal. "I won't say anything, just get off me, jerk!"

Wiping a wrist to his mouth, he allows hers their liberation, sitting straight backed to release her in totality. The knee to his crotch puts a damper on his generosity. She's cackling all the way back up to her feet.

"Sike!" she jeers his position on his knees below her. "I'm gonna tell Mom and Dad aaall about it, how you brought a boy home and slept in their bed, probably did _dirty_ things in there- _eep!_ "

The shout spawns from his sudden surge of energy again, springing up to tackle her round the middle and land them both to the couch cushions. She's ready for him, then, gripping his hands before he's able to overwhelm her, weaving a metronome at the battling hands as their legs wrestle between. Leverage guides him into a kick to her shin, which she battles by launching forward to bite him on the forearm (signature little sister move). At this, he hollers more in disgust than an ache, tugging his hand freed to shove her off of him. In turn, she _is_ shoved, thunking the side of her head into that counter cut's wooden edge. "Ow, Makoto! That really hurt! I'm not kidding, that really, really hurt..."

All at once, he halts himself, eyes tender as they watch her hand soothe the injury with eyes pinched to pain. "Oh, I'm sorry. I-I didn't mean to hurt you, I was just messing around. Are you okay?"

He offers a hand forward to check the hurt, which she'd just exactly accounted for in knowing her brother's soft stupidly trusting way to life, and she's laughing back atop him within the second. "Just kidding, _hahaha!"_

"Komaru!"

"We're home! Oh, you two! How many times have I said no roughhousing inside?"

Fingers clamped, knees fighting, they both turn heat flushed gazes toward the popped open front entry, suitcases aside the strong perch of legs, hands to hips where their mother tuts at them.

Komaru is the first to break it up. "Mom!" rings her glee, meeting in the room's midst to trap her in a hug. Just behind, their father walks his grin forward toward Naegi's upright position, hair a dandelion and throat caught in work. It feels a snap of the fingers since they'd left, though their return is sweet cream in his brew nonetheless. Perhaps a while past its expiration date, but...cream.

Exhaustion mingles amongst his father's eyes, smile no less ebullient in his newfound admiring. "Hey, you finished the puzzle!"

He churns at the middle the whole drive home.


	5. Chapter 5

There's a car in his spot when he pulls up to his house.

Princess blue Subaru.

His anxiety isn't soothed.

His anxiety isn't soothed, because the drive should have been his time to settle himself, but he found no solace the whole way, driven himself to madness as he thinks back upon the past hour- he has to keep it small, as thinking back upon anymore of his life may just bring the car into a veer over the pass. All of it, too, he knows it's his fault, so no blame for this wrench in his gut should burden any other.

At the very least, he's offered comfort in knowing no harshness is felt so far for his actions, not from one Togami Byakuya who's luxury burns a hole in the pocket of the coat lain to the passenger side. It folds over an arm once he's stepped out onto the lawn, the edge of which he'd had to park on with the driveway brimmed. Togami holds no malice for him, though Maizono is an entirely different story, genre, author.

"Makoto!" throws out her car's window his way, which halts to it, body stiffening even sans the spine. "There you are- God, I thought you got killed or something!"

"Huh?!" His shock shifts next to the one, nude save for crisply colored swim trunks and sunshades on the eyes, crept through the passenger window to stand at full height and call to him, "Hurry your skinny ass into the car, Naegs! This drive's gonna take over an hour. Don't worry though, I got the AUX."

 _This drive-?_ And it hits him that he's no room in his head for more than one issue, and his plans with another had booted the ones set for today to spend the weekend on the coast.

He scowls to himself. It's perhaps the last thing he'd like to do right now, number one being sleep for a week, number two being crash his head through a window.

"Oh, sorry, sorry!" he shouts back, then gestures a thumb to the house. "Let me run in and pack-" Kuwata's tucked himself back into the car, leant over the driver to lean an elbow to the horn. "-five minutes! I'll be out in five minutes!"

Attempting to fit the key into the knob eats up a full fifth of that. He zips about to catch a bag from the bedroom closet and stuff clothing into it the same time he's got a toothbrush scrubbing against his molars. Catching his breath seems out of the question. Spit, rinse, flick. The toothbrush drops into the bag, zips it closed and they're pulling into the parking lot of the fifty story Sunroute before he's stopped tasting Colgate.

"Jeez, Maizono, you sure this is in the budget here?" Kuwata pipes to her, the three of them walking with straps over the shoulders, sunshine in the pupils. Just meters aside, the decline down of sand tempts them, early afternoon shimmering the short trail of strangers in seasalt kisses. "Looks a little...bourgeoisie."

Heeled sandals click to the pathway. "It's no big deal. Look how close this place is to the beach! You can't beat that."

Conditioned air swallows them just as soon as the glass doors have swung. Location, location, location, sure, but it's...quite the fine lobby. No chandelier overhead, no, yet still, he's got the nerve to wonder if this chain had been researched whatsoever before this very moment in which Maizono's request for two twin beds (and Kuwata's hey, what the hell, man) meets a gawk back from the speaker. Lipgloss popped back in place from its initial hang, she flits through the purse at her hip, exhaling something fierce as the seconds collide. "Um, sorry, but could you put that on three separate cards?"

"Sayaka," sounds beside her before the clerk can finish his reluctant reach forward. She blinks wide ponds to him. He offers instead from his own pocket a sleek square, to which Maizono surely has astonishment to relay though not the time now as it sings through the swiper and hands back in several quick beats of keyboard clicks. Noticed, too, is the look of awe that claims the employee as well, perhaps reading over the card's details upon his screen he glances up from now to bow.

Backpacks land to exorbitant bedding.

"That was...surprising," she says to him once it is themselves alone in that paid out room, once Kuwata's told them to take his things, too, before sprinting off for first picks at bikini bearers. She looks to him, arms akimbo, where he's crouched to plug a charger box into the outlet beside one bed (after an explanation on the car ride that his death was presumed for the fact that his phone had gone unanswered the whole morning long, only to reach into a pocket and find it blacked out in exhaustion). To the nightstand sounds a vibration of electricity acceptance, and he glances back to her, smiling into a shrug.

"It's okay," he tells her, "I'm doing a lot better money wise lately, I want to give back."

It takes a moment, but it appears- that smirk thieved from feline lips beneath moon rays. "Oh, I see. What was the name on that debit card? Financial Father?"

He swears it's the sun beyond the plate glass wall that drives color across his face. She laughs into a bat on his arm, then pushes casual conversation forward in their trek back through the hall, down the elevator two floors to meet solid searing ground outside. For a sweet Saturday morning, the area is less jam packed than one would expect, attributed perhaps to the farther off location than the bustling capital. They find a patch of sand to flatten towels over, where she sinks her pocket book beside it once he's handed her the room key card to slip inside. Rather, she pulls a bottle from its short depth. "I have to put sunblock on, nobody likes a burnt up idol." Lotion squirts to fingertips as she goes on, "See if you can find Kuwata. With that stupid hair, I'm sure it won't be hard."

Slipping his shoes off with their things, Naegi nods, delights in the warmth of the sand guiding his footsteps. Away from their far corner, the beach feels more crowded as he trails onward, distracted only mildly by the woman tugging her swimsuit bottoms higher up her hips to his right, distracted quite boldly by the topless one nursing her baby beneath an umbrella's shade. Out of modesty, he glances the other direction. And some part of him is sure-

"You see the rack on that one?! It's like she's just _beggin'_ us to look."

-is sure that where's there's breasts, there is Kuwata Leon none too far off.

He feels the weight of an arm douse his shoulders. Drips fall from Kuwata's hair to his own, body arid elsewhere aside from idle perspiration through the contours, and Naegi wouldn't be so posh as to ask what flavor beverage he's had thrown in his face, but it does cross his mind. Instead, he asks him in perfect optimism, "How's it been going?"

On an instant, Kuwata scoffs, drops his arm back to rest on a hip whilst the other flails. "These eastern bitches, let me tell you. I can barely get the time a day from their hoity toity asses."

His gaze casts over the horizon. Naegi cringes inward in an offering of silent sympathy he knows is undeserved.

(In his experience, it isn't the eastern women that are the problem, it's the western men, but he decides not to say that either).

They walk leisurely the path forward, til the water laps their ankles and memories of leaving his landlocked prison cell surface. He remembers his father lifting him up beneath the arms at every hellbent wave. He remembers his father being swept back into the water himself by one of the strongest, and his mother had laughed and laughed beneath her big sun hat a few feet away. The ride laps his feet a slow rhythm. He's at peace.

A surge of water sticks the dark of his tee to his chest, sputtering off into a slip on the shore-soaked sand and landing ass down in the ocean.

Kuwata doubles in the middle. "You dumbass! You look like a-"

From the backs of his freckled shoulders, palms press hard, and his fall forward to be eaten up by the water gives way to the sight of Maizono laughing her ponytail into a sway.

His head surfaces, coughing, wiping his eyes as shoulders follow, arms, torso, waist, and he's back in action with a growling to point sharply her way. "You're really asking for it!"

He lurches forward, draws a playful scream from her once she's lifted from her thrashing legs to be dunked under the surface alongside him. They arise together, a blast of water hitting his way from her scoop of arms to deter his chase. She's laughing the whole way forward toward their third, who'd waded out up to the tuck of shirt into his trunks, accepting her close draw into his chest. "Makoto, you're my ally in this, got it?"

And he nods, because he has no speech ever since the first lay of eyes upon her; he has no speech after seeing her body post the whisk away of the sheer white wrap she'd donned since the ride up. It's awful of him, really, but she'd do a hell of a lot better in the modeling industry than music. The teeny weeny cherry patterned bikini only accentuates that skill.

As their attacker approaches, grin of a reynard, she huddles closer to him, takes a grip on his top. Naegi's hands roam against her in protection, and he moves one to match her forward splash of him. His shock sucks in the stream of water, which he coughs back up spewing, "What, you guys get to team up on me 'cause you're both shorties?"

"Yep!" Maizono chirps, spraying water furiously with either hand now, floated farther from them both. Kuwata mimics her prissy movements until waves are lapping like mad between them, and they're both laughing up wild storms until she demands, "Okay, okay! Truce!"

"No truces here, babycakes," he gloats, hair gel giving way to the splashes to fall in messy strands. "You gave up, that means I'm the king."

Maizono huffs, adjusting the tie amid her chest. "Yeah, 'cause my top was going to fall off, jerk ass."

"Hey, if you wanted to-"

"Don't even start." Bow perfected, she's smirking, circling her wrists through the water at either side to come to a relaxed wade. Naegi eyes her the whole way, thinks perhaps he should have applied some SPF as well.

Ease finds them all, soaking in sun and surf. They swim off and on, relaxing in the pull of fresh ocean. He think this has moved up on the list, if only a tad, at least now above the window smashing. Girls are go getters with all the best intent.

Ripples draw his gaze away from the sight of a little girl toddling toward her mother crouched at the tide toward the lift of Maizono's fingers. Droplets glide from her golden skin as she tugs tighter her hair's tie, patting the scalp beneath it a few, and with palms poised there is when she catches him staring.

"What's up?" forms his all over blush. Water sprays gently toward him from her index finger flick. "You both act like you've never seen a girl before."

"We've seen girls," Kuwata answers for the both of them. "Just not so many in one place with all their lady parts hanging out. It's an experience."

Those eyes roll as they so often do at his mouth's opening, tucks a look over one shoulder to scan the shoreline. Sun glints off her teeth as they lilt, "That one in the blue skirt was just looking over here."

He stands to full height so immediately the water falls from him in a shower. A hand tucks atop his squinting, drops it to widen in giddy glee. "Oh, hell, she's got a belly button piercing. Freaky chicks are just my type."

Their circle of ocean loses a member in record speed. She's chuckling when she turns back to him, out lets a sigh in her wading. This time around, it is he who notices the stare his way, which he returns with a smile that drops to a tilt of the head once she swims near enough to grasp his hands. Her hold on them sways left, right, still peering to her in all conjurable puzzlement. "Dance with me."

"Dance?" he laughs, "There's no music."

The solution comes in her humming lips, a tune he recognizes from her high school notebook margins, through the bathroom door on sleepover mornings, the stage upon which she's claimed in the recent. After he's given in to the swiveling, she beams at him, moves to hang her elbows round his shoulders and leave his hands hesitant in the air. The music dies a moment to allow her laughter to escape before he's pulled against her, chin to his neck's crook and his own touch at last finding her at the hips. She hums warm breath in his ear. He adores her charm.

Waves lap in curls around their shifting waists. To him it feels they're the only two to walk this Earth, despite the noise surrounding. It's all white, all sounds to aid his daytime reverie. He tells himself he shouldn't find this so pleasant, and he wouldn't at all had it not been for the flavor of strawberry chapstick lingering upon him still this morning. He can't say it'd been _her_ he'd thought of amidst last night's rouge- he hasn't the gall, nor could anything enchant him more than the silver lipped baritone stuffing his name out, the heat to fill his hollow. Feeling her so near as for her heartbeat to confuse itself for his own is never the most gentlemanly, knowing that that strawberry has been mixed between the exotic, the citrus. It isn't right for him to hold one each within either hand, nor is it right when those hands have filled with the back of her thighs, because the chorus has just sprung from her and she'd initiated her spin around that led to a leap up into his hold, long into the bridge as she rests their foreheads and leans those arms still over his strain.

Within wind carried time, she moves the most subtle bit, enough to _look_ at him, and while he's hoping she doesn't, he's hoping she does; and of course, she _does_ , it's inevitable for those mouths to come to a twine when the proximity's threatened confinement, though meager are his reciprocations. Her lips pucker soft to his face in a mine field placement, return to his mouth enough to nibble. He sighs into it, knowing not whether that sings fatigue or contentment.

Really, he feels bad for it. Feels bad that she's so delicious even with the sun dried chap of her lips. They refuse him next, palms moving to rest upon either shoulder with heads again mirrored. "Makoto..."

"I swear to God, one more _I'm a lesbian!_ and I'm driving the fuck home." His body goes rigid at the rising tone, and he doesn't _mean_ to shove her off of him to land beneath the water's surface, it's just a sort of instinct. "I'm a goddamned lesbian too, you know, I love women. ...Where'd Miss Thing go?"

She emerges from beside them at his questioning, spits a stream of saltwater and swipes her bangs from eyes that shift deadly to her perpetrator. Naegi winces into an ashamed apology. Kuwata sputters a laugh at her fall from grace.

"Forget how to swim? Don't worry, there's enough air in here, you'll float."

The knuckles tapping her head are batted away by a back hand slap, and she surges past them both to crawl for the sand. He watches her peel a slice of seaweed off one calf. Beside him, Kuwata scoffs out, "Jeez, she on the rag?"

"Kuwata..." is all he can muster, tearing himself into a pinch. The other softens into gentle wonderment, offering, "Hey, you okay? What happened while I was gone?"

Naegi blows a muss of air downward. "...I'm not entirely sure, honestly. But I think I messed something up."

A hand goes to his shoulder. "Yeah, you tend to do that," and when Naegi only frowns farther, "Oh, hey, I didn't mean that to be a dick or anything. I do too. All the time- I'm surprised either of you guys put up with my stupid ass sometimes." Naegi looks up at him, and there again reflects that same humanity through his eyes, glinting, _trying_. "It's all part of life. She'll be mad for whatever reason, then she'll get over it and we'll all be the friggin' Ramones again before you know it."

He's absorbing it all, breathing in the life it's all meant to be part of; Kuwata taps his rings gainst a bicep. "Come on, Naegs. _Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to gooo, I wanna be sedated..."_

Cool ocean air burns his nose. A twitching claims the mouth. " _Nothing to do, nowhere to go-oh..._ "

"Hah! There's the smiley bastard." Kuwata slaps him on the shoulder, brings him a pace forward. "Let's head up for a while, my boys are startin' to shrivel and I need a soda like nobody's business."

They find their towels, shoes all else, missing only their third member and her belongings, heeled prints trailing up the sand and vanishing into the asphalt toward the hotel. It's only so fortunate that she'd been generous enough to leave the room door unlatched, as the key card rests on one bed beside her purse and dress, which Kuwata shoves toward the edge to place himself atop, legs crossed and rootbeer can to his lips. He flicks the wall TV on. The shower taps hushed in the adjoining bathroom.

Two men, of course, they'd changed in opposite corners into dry outfits, Naegi padding amidst the beds as he scrubs his towel through damp brunette. He's placed to the second comforter top as he tugs his phone from its cord, where he blanches to scan over it. Missed calls only ever spear his center. Missed calls from Togami Byakuya twist that sword.

The step to follow is excusing his way onto the balcony. Wet swimsuits billow along the railing.

"I could afford better than the Sunroute, you know."

Naegi swallows his premeditated hello. "Uh- s-sorry." He clears his throat into a fist. "I didn't have my phone on me, either. I didn't know you called."

"Mhm," damns him. "I take it you needed a weekend getaway from the problems arisen by your recklessness."

On the horizon below his view, a sailboat churns along. Breeze fusses through his bangs. "...Yeah, kind of. Just really need some time alone, to work out my thoughts."

"In a room with two beds," Togami confirms.

The edges of his teeth battle one another. "...Yeah."

From the other end sounds a tapping, papers to oak. "Bring home something pretty for yourself," he says in parting, kills the line to dial tone, leaves Naegi to have that alone time with his thoughts he's reached for. Somehow, he'd rather have a skull full of hydrogen.

When he returns to the room through the sliding glass, Maizono is sat to the bottom edge of the bed with a towel tucked up beneath her arms, either of Kuwata's black socks at her sides. She rests her hazy eyes upon the baseball game beyond the screen, brush running through lengths of dripping wet royalty.

The next time she speaks to him, its to nudge her toes into his ribcage to wake him for breakfast.

"Complementary pancake bar downstairs." He's rubbing his eyes to the sight of her above him, blinks enough times for her sundress and bunned hair to no long be blurry. The look of her reads null to radiating emotion either negative or otherwise. It shifts over to the face down dead weight crowding three quarters of the bed beside him. "He'll be snoring til noon. C'mon."

Arriving to the dining hall proves one thing, twenty somethings cannot resist the tagline of free, since a close hundred of them crowd the tables now, maple drizzling from tired mouths. Focusing on the line ahead of them is preferred to focusing upon her. She's yet to say more to him than the initial invitation, only offering a quiet seaside smile to his elbow caught yawn, then snaps her gaze forward again to a newfound head of the queue positioning. Fingers poised to the plate stack, she pauses in scanning over the place card labeled ALLERGEN WARNING, and nods him ahead to take his fill. It makes sense, he wouldn't assume anything better than box mix with tap water would be handed out in masses.

They manage to squeeze over to a freed round table, white cloth sticky in crumbs left behind by the last crowd. He chooses to fill his mouth immediately to save whatever _talk_ may be building up. It's sure to come, he believes, and even if it does not, he'd still like the excuse to keep quiet. And...he likes pancakes.

A half slice is stuffed in a cheek, alongside layers of syrup and the readymade whipped cream he'd nozzled in the middle of the stack when she'd turned her attention away toward the strawberry slices, the moment he feels her focus begin to dig into him. Her fork rests in one hand, tongs halfway through her plain blueberry stack, and she's just _looking_ at him, not in hunger not in pain not in nostalgia, just looking at him, two snow globes melted in the late June sear. More than likely, the sight she sips in is most undignified, what with the spot of syrup on his cheek that rests puffed sidelong to contain the bite he's paused midway. But she looks at him still, not in the way she had yester's day or the one before, or any nine at night sheets pulled up over the chests and smoke passed between, merely Maizono sitting aside him as she has since their first third period freshmen biology class (the one where the teacher had alphabetized their seating chart, once they'd moved from their normal year one classroom to the science lab, and she'd really wanted to be next to her pretty girl friends with their tiny skirts and lacquered nails, though she'd been genial all the same to accept her scrawny little lab partner anyway, and, oh my god, did you go to Roku Middle School?!).

But- what was he getting at here? First and foremost, he swallows, chases it with a pull of ice water. Second and fivemost, he waits for her to say something, say anything, but she goes back to her breakfast, placing a berry behind her teeth and staring off into the room around them instead.

Time apart, perhaps, would aid them. They'll drive home this afternoon and he'll return to his home, his life, his cats, and she'll go to hers and run an extra fifteen minutes on the treadmill every night to assure the yukata will cinch. A text or two in between to check up on each other, or more accurately he'll catch the _seen by_ notif after Kuwata drops some watermarked laugh out loud picture into their group chat and know that she's thriving still. Perhaps they'll begin to drift. Perhaps, perhaps.

She grasps his hand atop the tablecloth so sudden he stumbles on his water sip.

"Makoto," her soft sigh opens, doesn't look nor _look_ at him with it. "...I'm sorry."

High pinned brows relay his surprise. He's set food at second priority now, once he's heard her whispers and lapped her sorrow. "You don't have anything to say sorry for, Sayaka," he tells her, since he believes it, since her cheekbones had tinted the pink of penitence.

But, "I do," she promises, and _now_ she meets his eye, still with that heat layered on his knuckles that dare not twitch. "I know you've got other things going on, and that other guy you've been seeing... I've just been making things super weird between us, that's not what I wanted at all."

Without context, her sidestepping would be a mess to decode. Despite it his nod flows once, precedes his slow, slow reply. "...What _did_ you want?"

She sighs through the nose and claims her hands back to herself. "I don't know... You?" The uncertainty hardly feels a service, though she goes on, gaze toward her lap, "I'd rather die than admit I've messed around with a guy like Kuwata. But with you...it's almost like I'd be proud to. You're _nice_ , and you care about me for more than just this idol persona. You're the kind of person I...that-that I could have brought home to meet my mom." She's smiling, even if her irises glisten, even if her throat catches, she's smiling. "I know she really would have liked you."

He isn't sure how to swallow it. Quite possibly he's been burdened by the most touching form of love a life could ever know, whether it be how they exist or to what she alludes, he adores her. A crowded breakfast hall is no place for it. Not for her melody or for the discordant spring free of his E minor. "Can I tell you something?"

Her misty glance upward is cue for his lungs to conquer their tightness. "...I think I'd marry you if I ever had the chance." Saltwater stings his chap. "I guess that's kind of a lot to just drop on you, sorry, but ah...I don't know. ...I don't know."

For too long a while for unaltered comfort she stays in her leant back fold of the leg, admires a fanned hand in her lap. It goes slowly to tuck hair behind one ear, once she's nodding her head as though the neck's pure languid river, up down down up. Her chest bends forward as she reclaims her silverware, and to his mouth she offers a side cut sliver of complementary blueberry pancake.

He stares at her over it close to a minute. And, hesitant, accepts it into his mouth.

* * *

He was right- he _did_ complain about the cat hair clinging to his pants.

That'd been the driving factor in moving to his bedroom, after flipping already six times flipped couch cushions hadn't done any good at all. Instantaneous, he'd tugged the linty top comforter down to a triangle fold over, and he'd placed himself directly to the sheets without the shortest semblance of any right. Naegi does not question him, however, glowing from a Pokémon thermos full of leftover Cabernet, which he has to wonder if the acidic tang feels any different on the flesh of his cock than a more sobered mouth would.

He feels the need to rewind, or retrace, accounting surely for the fact that Togami had invited himself over to be introduced to his real residency, had scoffed and asked why he'd furnished a four walled bathtub, had been offered a drink (for Naegi's sake, since he feels entertaining him at his full performance rate exhausts him in the first ten minutes) that he'd accepted (thank _fuck_ ). And he had only laughed a little bit when one of the two total wine glasses the big fancy adult owns slipped from his urging it down from the top cabinet shelving. The bandage on his right ring fingertip from too carelessly sweeping the glass bits reminds him again of the humiliation.

He cannot be bothered so much so because, again, the drinking and the glowing and the fingers gripping through his hair, yadda yadda yadda. The detail that's managed to slip from him the same as that glass had is how he's ended up on his knees with a dick tip caressing his throat, but he doesn't mind that so much, in honesty.

There's a strangled sound from above him, and those hands twist further, harder. It's pure moonlight against his features in retracting himself, in lining kisses along thighs just to rest with him like that, so close and pounding.

"Come to a Tanabata festival with me," his midnight voice feathers. Lids ever gentle in their close and tugged to staring by a palm forcing his forehead tilted back.

Ire clicks between Togami's teeth. "Bargaining with me for my orgasm..."

His eyes glaze to the tune of a tongue lolled going stuffed again.

The issue does not represent itself until they're tucked against each other, blankets strewn away, bare legs splayed. Neither touch besides the hand rested to Togami's chest as it beckons life within; he'd moved his head away when Naegi's own breaths through the nose had tickled his hair's tips. Naegi had laughed in another exhale out the same, and swallowed the idea of pressing kisses to his neck.

"What's this you've gone on about now?" he mutters in a turn to him.

Quite exactly, he cannot recall it himself, only after he's been given the time to. Even then he cannot place why at all it's come. "Oh- the festival? Oh." Fingertips tap just beside his jutting collar. "My friend is performing there. She wants to be an idol, so it's like, a pretty big deal for her."

Togami has his quip slapped back in an instant. "Is this the _friend_ who you have claimed hates you or the one that whored you out?"

Trepidation silks in his center. "...The second one," he admits, moves to rest his forehead to a shoulder crook for his grasp upon decency. "I'm supposed to ask Kirigiri to go too, though- she's the one that hates me. I really don't think she wants anything to do with me..."

It isn't that Togami asks him for more detail, nor that he's particularly studied in psychotherapy; Naegi loses himself in the warmth placating his skin on skin, works fingers through the strength of that chest underneath them as he piddles on. "It was all a big misunderstanding. She asked me about something, and I sorta kinda...didn't tell the truth... But-But I _couldn't_ , because if I did, my friend Kuwata would be upset I told somebody he had lice- oh, don't tell him I told you that. It's cleared up now anyway." Naegi pauses to wet his mouth, doesn't catch the wrinkled disgust thrown his direction. "Anyways, the details don't even matter, she's just been upset because she feels like she can't trust me entirely. Honesty is a really touchy thing with her, she's a detective. I know I should have thought about that, but she always talks me into corners, and then all this other stuff came out about other lies I've told her- never anything _major_ , just...just, I think I've gotten a bad habit of that lately."

This time, he thinks he's just talked himself into the corner, though the locomotive couldn't stop with such steam gained. And, more so, it's been just for himself, just realization come to the surface by the power of his drippy heart. Nasty little dishonesties every so often. It could be the influence of the one who's aiming to form a career on the basis of it, that gilded persona he's sliced his gaze right through all the while. Blame another, he shan't, as he hasn't ever been tied up and tortured to say he likes anko or yes, this is his house. Seeming benign one by one, that's no rationale. He only wonders how to stop himself.

To the side of that, there's room enough to contemplate how Togami will react, if he'll storm from the door ass nude to never again converse, if he'll sniff once with eyelids bored and speak close irrelevance (which is just his flavor). "Kirigiri... With that name, you're better off."

"Hm?" says his blinks up toward him, and Togami licks a scoffing, a flick beneath the fringe. "You know of her legacy, I presume. That family is nothing but a train wreck, and yet the coal still burns."

Where Naegi cannot fathom a reply, his fulmination continues its fulminating. "It's the young one, correct? The dirty bitch who thinks she's any business in others' affairs. Aiko, is it?" A smirk has formed with the words, faint, arrogant. "She investigated my so called involvement in a gang member murder. As if I'd bother with that simply because it happened on the same block as my conglomerate's building, _please_ , the coke will take out all of those hood rats before my bullet ever could."

Small world, he supposes. All he's able to manage is churning it through his mind a while. Perhaps white lies aren't so pressing as a trigger happy aristocrat.

"...Kyouko," he corrects after some time in silent dove heat. "Her name's Kyouko."

The lack of response spells the lack of bothering, leaves Naegi's touch stilled and concern wavering. A half mile list unfurls in his head. Red felt pen marks a stone eyed investigator at the top.

This lap around, his bed is empty to bristling morning light.

That's well enough; he just might need some time to himself, anyway. Just might.

Three bangs to the laundry machine. Salmon chunks slap wetly to a plate, clinks it to the pavement. Mai-san deserves the apology for not being invited in last night.

Upon a first instinct to check his phone in the following, he halts himself into a relax, lids locked nose flared to oxygen, and places it into his popped shut top kitchen drawer. The trail of him follows round the space, where he's never known personal tidiness shown by papers spread over counters, bedding twisted hurricane zone along. His head bobs to the tune latent within it as he moves to spread them out, prop the pillows all Better Homes style. Housekeeping, that could be his calling. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he pictures the play through, the glance up tiny French lolita as he's dusting a high shelf enough to make him squirm. For an inperceivable rationale, the eyes that silk him in fantasy bear the sheen of silver frames afront them.

He takes to wiping dust from the flickering television and thinks nothing more of it.

(Of course it's a lie, and of course the only single one thing he can focus on pertains to the newest suitor in his life, where they head and what _they_ truly means, and he thinks thinks thinks he'd like it to end in a man in his bed when the sun takes rise, but perhaps an arrangement for weekend visitations could be set- he's a demon consumed for fairness to all).

He's exhausted from his latest endeavors by the time he leans to the couch. The day has been significantly eaten away in his dawdling, though at the very least, his beneath the bed cavern no longer houses three shirts he'd thought he'd lost and various trinkets with cat teeth imprinted in them. It's odd to him, now, to just... _exist_ in his own space on his own time.

Something in that feels a waste. But that feeling in itself is a sickly shade, needs not boredom to lead a fulfilling life, needs to always be the one at the lead without a want. He's wedged within a ravine at dusk. How quaint.

So often does he tremble at the thought of another's misfortune that he'll work his fingers raw to the bone to heal a hurt he's no matter with. What shall befall of his own? Tragedy has paved pathways for him. And he's fitting the dramatic, but he's finding himself in the glazed over eyes of afternoon, blazing sun and milky moon. There must exist that middle ground for him to find his footing. The nature of what he's left himself to swill within sits muddled now in truth. He must be a person on his own, all his own. He will- and he will and he will and he can.

The carpets all deserve a thorough vacuuming, he decides, and lifts himself to deliver.


	6. Chapter 6

Minikui Bookstore has no job openings available. No, not even to alphabetize by genre. No, not even to dust the shelves, g-get lost.

The turn away is for the best. He hadn't actually wanted to work alongside his sister's scraggly and crude best friend at her part time day job; going there to drop her off for the afternoon had been enough of a toll on him. But she'd asked him sweetly, because Dad was at work and Mom was in the middle of her afternoon soap, and neither of them knew a whisper of his weekend rendezvous beneath their roof, so he allows her to be his passenger. Just the same, the secondhand book shop sits four blocks from this day's destination, one upon which he'd promised her lunch, but coffee is less of a commitment, which suits him alright for now. He'd stopped by a lunch spot regardless, to drop a healthy stack of payment to two sweet eyed grandparents they'd been xeno talked out of, tells them only it's a donatation, accepts the forced handful of butter cookies into his stomach anyway. Things are alright.

If he can get his hands to stop quaking atop the steering wheel, things will feel twice the alright.

He shouldn't be nervous, not of his best friend- his best friend! She's witnessed his absolute worst, and he her own, though hers occur at much quieter frequency than his, admittedly. Either way, she's been there, and he's been with her, versa vise, always the locked at the beltloops type pair. They'll get back to that in time, required first his sincerity in clearing the black stratus forecast. It's alright. It's alright.

If he hadn't found his pockets to be devoid after he's stepped up to the counter to order a pumpkin spice muffin, things would feel even the slightest bit alright.

He whips back to his car and around the block in a moment's breath. Kirigiri hadn't shown herself yet, as he'd been conscientious in arriving extra on timely (the muffin was to play a reward for himself), so he's got a certain handful of minutes until he'll be keeping her waiting at all. That still does not coil his pursuit any calmer. This meeting is meant to be a refreshing start again, try again. Making a complete ass of himself to tell her, hey, I uh forgot my whole wallet at home, could you pick up the tab? would only...well, sure, make a complete ass of him. Flame gleams behind either eye. He won't fail her ever again.

Considerably may he be wrapped within drama a touch again, though it's the adrenaline of fret coursing through every vein that's the done the dirty work. That, and the missing thud to every heartbeat as of late, the ones stolen from him by coal that still burns, by kiss bruises on his throat, by a mother that would have really liked him.

Would anyone, if they could see him now, see the ugly scarlet of his core- would they love him? And a thought strikes him to ponder if they do so at all in the current, and it's foolery to delve a spoon into the milky munch of his psyche now, and he's two minutes from his street when gull wings catch his attention overhead left, and he realizes on the glance back straight that his wallet is sitting on the passenger side dashboard.

He's sure his tires have all just been skinned from the intensity he stomps the break, but the biker that freezes as though mimicking a doe's stance seems much more pressing in the moment. His front license plate breathes against the boy's front wheel. Naegi wonders which of the two can hold their shock white expression longest.

Regaining himself, he knows it must be himself who action falls to, unclicks himself from the front seat to stand before him. "I am _so_ unbelievably sorry- are you alright?!"

Once he has the will, he recognizes the boy as the teenager a few houses down from his own, a near everyday sight to watch the black metallic of his bike sweep by the front windows. So close here, he sees him at last for more certainty, the fear in his eyes shrinking behind the hang of dark hair around his head, beneath his hat. All that black- Naegi pities how deeply he must swelter this time of year.

But the boy's only tugged his cap down further by the brim, mumbles that he's fine before making to pedal away. Naegi calls, "Wait!", thinking there's got to be a better mend, offer him a ride to where he's headed, buy him three orange sodas and a new pair of converse. Anything, _anything_ to right his wrong. Metallic black slides off down the intersection before he can blink.

Discomfort settles in his stomach to know it remains unfixed, always to hang over him henceforth. He guesses some form of karma will be on its way soon enough to strike him at the knees, which in this very second buckle quick to toss himself out of the path of the oncoming Ferrari, bright red with its top popped and luxurious strawberry blonde curls trailing in the whipping wind; it happens so _swift_ , there's no right place to settle his eyes, not on her cheetah print crop top or round sunglasses, the getaway driver aside with a gothic literature look about her just the same as the boy on the bike. It happens so fast, he has no time to process that a car has just flown in a swerve around his own, and the driver side door he'd left open in his panicked step out is now thirty feet ahead in the road's midst.

" _Told you not to come back!"_ caterwauls past his splayed back position on the sidewalk path. His hair still twitches in the smoking breeze.  
  
To finish it off, a chime sounds from his hoodie pocket.

The lift of himself to his feet is a trembling mess, no witnesses for a plaintiff's alibi at least not present to watch him make a fool of himself now, either (optimism!). He stands there in the road, glancing between his gouged out Corolla and the door lain to his other side.

A nodding takes his head. He lifts the phone to his cheek, and smiles against the receiver.

"Hi, Kirigiri!" One hand rests on his hip to strengthen his posture. "What's up?"

He hears a muted bustle on the other end, which her voice breaks through softly to say, "I'm at the coffee house."

"Right," he nods again, purses his lips into a low hum. Phone tucked to shoulder and cheek, he crouches to inspect the weeping hinges hinged only to open air, runs a palm along the whole bare arch. "...You want me to be honest with you, right?" He stands anew, needs only one hand to hold the call and leaves the other to be tossed high over the head. "Well, I think I might be a little bit late today, because my car has no door. Yep- ah, no, yes, you heard it right. My car's got no fucking door, because I wouldn't sleep with my boss. And it's- mother _fucker!_ " From the hood where he'd gone to lean that gesticulating palm, he's just as quick to whip it away, metal scorched beneath the beating sun enough to feel an oven rack. He's shaking that hand out, clomping feet to the asphalt in spins and he _laughs_ rather than shout any further. "My car has no door. I never went to college. I got fired from my job. I have a friend who is a girl who wants me bad enough to hate me and a friend who is a boy who hates me bad enough to want me, isn't that funny? I guess I deserve it. I guess I deserve everything that has ever happened to me, for some reason! I must, I must I _must!_  There's no other explanation!"

He cares not for the heat of the metal now in pummels of the fist into dents, hysterical the whole way in howling laughs that fade so easy to dewdrop rivulets down the liner, pouring pouring pouring til there's mucus pooling and he's no longer so manic as he is lost within himself, fist offering one last weak pound to the hood before falling flat the same as his forehead stings against it. A minute of wind mutes his heartbeat. He grapples for his phone, left ticking seconds of the call away on the hood, presses it hot to an ear as he collapses into the driver's seat, sighing one healthy measure. "Do you have plans for Tanabata?"

He doesn't bother with retrieving the door, because there's no police around to punish his u-turn, and because Kirigiri had said _no_ so he'd said _how about this_ and Kirigiri had said _yes_ so their reunion tour is put on hold for the present time, the present time where he texts Komaru to have Mom pick her up later, because he has something to take care of, and Komaru says _ok!_ with a smiling kitty cat emoji, so he texts Kuwata to tell him to be outside in ten minutes, because he needs his help with somethi no backspace backspace backspace, because he has something really awesome to do and wants some company, and Kuwata doesn't answer so he pounds on 3F until his burnt fists are bruised, too, and perhaps it's on a piss break that he notices the noise enough to pull the door open with a gamer headset hung round his neck to ask where the hell the fire is, man; and then they're pulled into the car dealership lot after taking the back roads the whole way to avoid any pink tickets stuffed into his hand for driving with a fourth of his doors missing.

"Damn, this place is big," whistles Kuwata once he's ducked from the open hatch. Hands to the jean pockets, he prattles on, "I don't think I've ever been to one of these before. Kanon's old station wagon has been getting me around for a while."

Naegi stands marveling at the vastness of luxury cars around them. Compared to his three door Toyota, a mountain bike would look lavish, but he'll set that aside to glaze his eyes along the lot in wonder. He's never been one for such regality (clearly) which makes him hardly a proper candidate not to peel down the street in a new Maserati. He's halfway convinced himself to take a peek at the rainbow of used Beetles lining one section on their approach to the main building.

That walk does not meet completion, as they're stopped just outside by a bean pole of a black suited man that offers a hand out, a more than amiable suggestion that he help the two gentlemen take a look around. He accepts, bows forward to follow the man as his automatic path goes toward the more pricey side of the lot as he inquires as to what he's got in mind.

"Something that can withstand two bitches in a convertible," Kuwata tells him, and he appears unsure as to if a chuckle would be appropriate. It comes regardless, the perfect segway to introduce them to their line of best crash resistance, top safety awarded. Naegi twists himself into the uncertainty of a pucker. Kuwata blows motorcycle raspberries behind the wheel of a sportscar as the man proffers him something perhaps more in tune to his taste.

From there they shift to glancing over sleek sunglints against silver, black, vermillion. He dare not touch any, fears even looking at one will set spontaneous combustion into motion at his fault the total. Rather, he listens on as he's told the verbatim horse mileage radar of this current year model Jaguar, or something of that sort. It isn't until his fleeting focus matches stares with the medallion of a pristinely white Mercedes that he knows what true love means.

"...You sure you can afford that one, Naegi?" The exuberant at his thirty percent commission salesman leads the way toward the main entrance inside, Kuwata just catching up behind them to pant out his woe, which goes waved off.

Naegi smiles into the fresh fluffed sunlight. "Don't worry, my boyfriend is paying for it."


	7. Chapter 7

Kuwata had only been mildly peeved to learn he wouldn't be riding home in a five milliyen price tagged Mercedes, soothed in knowing he has full permission to sink the first car into any lake of his choosing.

The road ahead smells of mowed lawns and wilted sakura, but Naegi wouldn't know that; he's far too busy behind rolled up windows, tint and all, to soak in the fine rays of artificial cooling in every last nook. Above the AC knobs sits the radio dial. Flicking it on to find more than four stations have reception is a bliss beyond any other.

Both hands grip the steering wheel at the top. He sits in a forward lean, not because he hadn't thought to adjust the seat to his twig legs before tearing off, but because he's got more euphoria than is storable in one soul. It bursts out in form of harmony from his lips alongside the blaring radio speakers. He revels in the long way home.

To that home, though, he worries as to what will become. Someone had been so desperate a thug to yearn for the contents of a pity-mobile. A God can only foresee how parking this new whip will blow over. Maybe a new house is in the works, since he's got nothing to lose with every swipe of a card, a new house with two stories and a swing on the porch and no prison runners lumbering around his front lawn. He'll miss the cats. His mouth tightens in thought.

For this day, he's a solution to keeping the target off his back, and the dashboard screen connects to his bluetooth in two taps of the index, fades the music out in another. The way the dial tone echoes throughout the vehicle's entirety, that's so truly enchanting, he's almost mad that she picks up.

"Sayaka, hey." Tax collects on his forcing of his giddiness down within him to give off a cooled vibe. "What are you up to right now?"

He glides smoothly through a green light. Her thought process is audible. "Hmm...like, _right now_ right now? Sitting with a face mask on, watching a sad NSPCA commercial." A pouting tone follows, gets shaken off. "But I was planning on getting my nails done later. Why, what's up?"

Palms tap a melody to the wheel, where his grin is genuine now after sipping up her story. "Alright, perfect. Can I pick you up in like, ten minutes?"

"What?" crackles out over the speakers, then she giggles. "You wanna mani-pedi, too? ...Okay, I'll be ready in twenty."

He smirks at the banter before they exchange goodbyes. Punk rock kicks back to full gear just as soon as the call ends.

He's close to having made it through a full studio album by the time he sees her heels click down the side steps. Whole way through, he keeps his eye on her, repressing the smirk that grows as fast as her expression turns to round mouthed shock.

"What's this?!" she gawks, passenger side door tugged open to allow her stare all around the upholstery.

"A pineapple smoothie," answers Naegi plainly, offering out the one he'd snagged for her at baby's first drive thru on the way over.

She tries to pull a face, but it's quick to give way back to her excitement. "Shut _up_." Her grasp accepts the drink and drops it to sweat in the center cup holder beside his frozen lemonade. "This is yours?"

He nods, and she smirks, "Let me drive."

The stars in her eyes don't fade the whole time she's in control. She circles around her driveway a few times, just for good measure, laughing the way out onto main roading. It's a joy to watch her joy- Naegi has to think that she looks quite right behind the wheel, matching the clean paint exterior from her scrunchie to her ass riding jean shorts. All the pretty valley girl in between fits just as well.

"Alright, I have to ask," comes after a mile or so. Her glance toward him runs sleek. "Who paid for this?"

Naegi slurps his straw in vague pondering, set to put that into motion when the center screen relays the ringing of a call, tone chiming out around them to his ambivalence, her peering.

He selects to accept the call. "Hi, Togami."

Quiet radiates back. Peripherally, Maizono's smiling the slightest, keeping her eyes on the road and hands ten and two, perfect to appease any instructor or new ride owner. He listens, listens, until finally, "That's more like it." Naegi ducks his head into humor. "I hope you realize this equates to approximately one hundred blow jobs."

He's whipped back up into heat at the face, glancing to his side where her cheeks are stuffed with amusement she dares not allow. Changing the subject would do him well. "I'm with my friend, Maizono," he says, then thinks he'd ought to clarify to him the steps of human interaction. "I want you to meet her."

"Hiii," she trills. "Love the car. Wanna come get your nails done with us?"

They close into a stoplight around the corner to their destination. Maizono takes the moment of peace to sip off her melty smoothie, while the voice to the third crushes through the speaker. "No."

It'd be awkward had he not killed the call so immediately afterward, leaves Maizono knitting her brows as she sips, and Naegi touches light to his nape. "Ah, sorry about that. He's...shy."

She rolls her eyes into sarcasm, though they pinch back forward a second later with her tongue out lolling. "Brainfreeze- _ahghghgh_ -!"

"Sayaka, the light's green," he tells her, the shrill honks behind them doing so the same. One eye forces open in her grasp of the wheel into a turn, narrow and sharp, cuts across the lot entry to the righthand plaza the identical timing a stout minivan is exiting, and she's a centimeter from shattering the very windshield before them which she saves in a quick swerve to a perfect parking space.

Together they rest behind the tight hold of belts over the chest. Blinks find her after the stun, arms relaxing from their rigid stretch forward, and she laughs from pressed lips the way one does when they know it's naughty. Naegi doesn't think his eyes could swell any rounder.

"I knew that was going to happen," she mumbles to him, then turns with a finger tapping a temple. "That wasn't a brainfreeze, it was an extrasensory episode."

A moment goes by in clouds brushing overhead.

"...You're such a dumbass," Naegi tells her, faces her at the center, and explodes into laughter she can't help copying.

* * *

Such a tall man requires high rise ceilings, he supposes. That hadn't stopped his firework marveling to every bit of glass, every strip of hardwood.

The bedroom had proved no less enthralling on his initial entrance, fantasy, only more so to his being swept up and pinned upon the mattress. It sinks warm beneath them now, soft foam he most certainly hopes he'll be remembered by. He can't keep the thoughts of hotels from his mind, with how thick that blanket up over their waists rests, how lavish the room sings with its gold rim mirror, headboard carved more intricate than could ever be necessary, not a single sock tossed to the floor below. He's a sweet cream pressed to the other's flaky pastry. One hand sits within a new hold, tries not to flush on his thinking how much his size is wolfed away by comparison. The touch has only met for admiration's sake. Behind his lamp lit lenses, Togami peers to his splayed fingertips, all of which wiggle for his viewing pleasure.

"I could have done better," falls his comment on the fresh clear coat manicure. The hand is dropped to meet his chest. Naegi doesn't stop smiling the whole scoot closer his way, whole lazy little kisses pressed all over his handsomeness.

Low rumbling spills from him, purrs along beneath the bites on his throat. Naegi touches him, kisses him in melds of their warmth, and he isn't so sure what he's doing here nor there, knows only that touch that touch that touch- the burn of ice over salt. He cannot coax a song from this afternoon's drive to leave his head.

Idle hums are silenced by the push of him to his back. Togami kisses his mouth in such a ferocity to curl the blood round his arteries.

"I don't like your friend," he mumbles against a make out.

Naegi kisses his lips several more pops, palms to either side of the jaw. "You don't like me, either."

Moving to collect him up within the arms, if only to draw them more together, begging, the heat of his skin from lips to chest take his lust. "You're damn right," and a kiss befalls gently the perk of his breast.

His head has dipped, where his hair is impossibly soft, impossibly lush, just the same as the moans cotton spun from him with every inch farther downward. The chest the navel the warmth of his being. He'd be no man to say he hates the feel of hot lips gone down on him. So skilled as they belong to Togami Byakuya, more prowess than he's the skin for, it'd be simply sick of him.

Nightstand lamps feel a candle glown on him. Neither need the illumination to claim beauty, not within each other's eyes in that very same honey, alone and serene to a drag of the heart. And there are no candles in the physical, but the wax drips to his flesh despite it; drizzles, never cools never hardens to chip away, just rests, as does blood stay warm across linoleum countertops, oil settled atop ocean ounces. Moans are that warm murk from the mouth, fingers to the sheets. He says it, so hush in pleasure, dare he not tread any further, but he still says, "Byakuya..." in all the world's soft caresses.

The owner to it looks up, a good boy who's leash has just been tugged, only he's the master of all and he bears never a collar. Togami look up to him, because he's no longer Togami at all, not the online stranger who'd censured his harlothood. Rather now, the wet of his mouth entraps all the wings within to press gainst his thigh, bruises nipped the full length. His, only ever his own. All of him. Naegi holds onto no qualms to oblige, not after he's just come in his mouth and the night breathes tender oranges cross the room.

It does not fade away a long haul post. Though the artificial has departed, the sky melts creamsicle all down the horizon they travel, and a four hour drive is not so bad in a brand new Mercedes with air conditioning and two hundred stations. And a handsome man behind the wheel. A handsome man with his clavicle showing. And- he's getting too wrapped up in the details, it's solid enough to say merely that Togami Byakuya is driving his car. In a rich cobalt yukata that broadcasts the firm of his pectorals, neck, even wrists a delight to drink in for their rigid, strong look of bones.

(It'd been a pain to get him to participate in the tradition at all, of which Naegi'd only tried so hard to push _fun_ upon him, and the acceptance had only at all been for the trade of the lacy underwear he dons beneath his own).

Nerves pet him idly, increase once the hours of chattering, resting have lulled into the thrum of music several streets down. Togami murmurs something about derelicts blockading the road, spinning into a curbside park to cue seatbelts unbuckled and sandals on the pavement. It isn't so much the walk itself as it is his pattering insides; he tugs closer together the dull green sides of his cotton top, thinking ahead to the night's festivities, the night's awful crowding. The energy reads idyllic.

Sweat creeps down a temple. He breathes out smartly through his nose, glancing forward as the chaos (organized) gains on them. Naegi swears he'll sooner collapse than finish the full evening, with the heat and the noise and the five hours without anything in his stomach, perhaps reading so in the pale of his face enough to feel vigor tap his quiver. When he glances down, his hand is clasped within another, and his pulse has swung to peace.

Colors delight overhead. Upon the canvas of the darkening sky, streamers wave to them, decorations handcrafted and cutesy, another look over a ways pointing to the towering bamboo already spotted in rainbow paper wishes. He sees no sign of this night's truest star so far, hasn't for the past four days she's spent up here under an old friend's roof to make it to practices, she'd let him know ahead. Away from the grass they stand along, vendors line a long street row. A whisper nudges his ear after he's caught staring their way.

"Do you want something to eat?" Togami says to him, watches his hand be pulled free just to unfold banknotes from his breast pocket tuck. Naegi hasn't the chance to deny nor confirm before he's nodding forward toward them, his sniffing magnetizing him toward the booth of takoyaki sizzling in a deep fryer. The exchange is made in a barked demand from over his head. Teeth nibbling gratefully, Naegi is almost impressed by Togami's reign over all else, how quickly his orders are met no matter how harsh, bowing all the way and pleased just to serve him, it seems. Impressed or scared utterly shitless. He chews his snack to keep a quiet stance.

They walk the length of it down, up again at the other's turn around, halfway through down a second time when he clicks his teeth into aversion. Naegi is almost sorry he asked once the reasoning falls, "Unlike you, I won't settle for just any swill thrown at me on wooden skewer."

His brows pinch. Over a distance, someone shoots a confetti popper off, hoots wildly to follow. After focusing back to the temple of folded animosity, he asks him in all innocence, "Oh, you're hungry?"

So benign, one wouldn't expect it to prompt a glare, but Togami is the special case of a man who won't stand to feel belittled by patronizing concern. Naegi winces back into himself, tapping his emptied skewer to his lip whilst thought works a ways down the row. He's forgotten the predicament in close entirety once his eyes stop on a booth three to the right, a _loud_ one.

His steps pad closer to it, feels them followed despite the prior tantrum. Noodles chill in a wide stagnant hotpot. One man works the booth alone, meat and vegetables sliced in blind precision on either side, while the front and center middleman scoops out soumen into throw away bowls. He's laughing in a pinch of the eyes at whatever his current customer's just said, apron splattered in grease, dark afghan yarn hair corralled in an elastic band behind his shoulders. The evident comedian retreats, stuffing ramen in his face, and no sooner does Naegi take his place that the man behind the table throws his arms above to yelp out ecstatic, "Naegichi!"

Having his head crushed into a hug isn't as high a concern as making sure the pot of noodles isn't dumped forward from the table's rock. "Hi, Hagakure," he says, and he's grinning at last on the stand back straight. "I didn't expect you to be here."

"Maizonochi asked me to come see her sing," he tells him, lifting a ladle alongside his sly smile to sift through the pot. "I'm taking the opportunity to sell my world famous hiyashi chūka! Secret Hagakure family recipe, only two thousand yen a bowl!"

Naegi offers him a sweet smiling, albeit still with that sweat down the neck, and Togami fills in his empathy's silence to bite, "I could pay half that amount at a place that _doesn't_ allow its chefs to have filthy bare feet."

The filthy bare footed chef laughs at the insult. Beside him, Naegi offers one himself out of weak trying. "Ahaha, um- this is my friend, Togami," he tells him, feels it the only simple introduction to become of him tonight. He chews pensively his tongue, then suggests, "Ah, you said you're hungry, right? Why not try some ramen? Hagakure is a really good cook."

Fingers to the silver frames, he speaks just as slow in the syllables. "...Fine."

Much easier than expected, Naegi's widened eyes say a moment. Hagakure's already cooing into a slap of noodles to styrofoam. It passes along, ham carrots green bell peppers. A salted tomato slice drops atop it, and he yanks the cash away to hand the meal over in glee.

"Good?" Naegi's already wondering before his first bite is completed. Puckering, he offers a noncommittal reply in his one shoulder bob. Bright green blinks meet a proffer of chopsticks forward. Broth drips as the bite awaits his acceptance. "I...I don't like tomato...I'm sorry."

He's worried he's upset him something fierce, judging by the darkening beneath his eyes that tear elsewhere. Naegi wants to offer solace, wants to bite into a tomato like a fresh picked apple just to make it all better, but he supposes that the attention would only make his face flush worse so the new interruption feels welcome to both. To the side of their starlight, Hagakure's up waved fist has its content plucked away from the approach up behind him, another thick cat tail of hair behind the bandana atop, stinking of nicotine from a mile past. "How's it for you, boys?"

The bills newly in her hold are counted out and flattened, and Hagakure doesn't look the least bit ruffled to have had it stolen in his ebullient spew of his ham-stuffed mouth. "Mommy!"

Smiling again, Naegi straightens his back upright to bow a touch her way. "It's delicious, Hagakure-san, thanks."

"Secret family recipe," she smirks, thumbs up his way and hipchecks her son to the side, "You get back to the veggies, baby."

"Yes, ma'am!"

Naegi still smiles that light lush of his face, goes to turn it toward his other but finds him retreating a length already gone. He swallows his surprise to hop after him.

"Hey," he calls once he's close enough to lay touch on one elbow. He notes the absence of any meal in his hands. "Are you okay?"

"Nothing," he spits so instantly that Naegi has to assume he's rehearsed it prior, doesn't seem at all to notice it's foolery. His disposition does not read anger in itself, walks a calm pace along the line with arms across himself. His eyes are placid the same in their watch forward, until it is that they're just one booth away from the end of the row where his look falls a subtle interest.

"Which one do you want," isn't quite a question at all, but Naegi catches it quick to _um_ and _ah_ before the taiyaki vendor, hot under the spotlight to sputter a point toward the word _custard_ on the front flyer. Again he claps out orders. Again Naegi blunders to keep himself sound.

He isn't handed the treat once it's wrapped and given out. Togami grasps it by the paper, guides him toward a short cement wall decorated in fallen streamers, unattended drinks, bags. Their section is clear gray. Togami sits to it, and he pats his lap, beckoning.

"You're cutest with your mouth stuffed," he murmurs in sudden suave, once Naegi's place sideways in his lap and the biscuit to his lips. He's pulsing for more than the sun. Chilled sweetness fills his mouth.

It's full to the brim by Togami's forcing forward the treat; his fingers lift to meet a wrist, with vanilla leaked in a smear on his lip, with an arm curling around his hip to pull them closest. Half bitten off, he retracts the treat to allow him the chewing, presses kisses beneath his earlobe. "I am not your friend."

He could choke on the swallow. "Oh- s...sorry, sorry." Down the road beside them, two women in sleek floral kimonos flow in a dance, fans paddling before makeuped faces. One lifts her arm high above the head, sleeve trailing after. The other's kiss blown toward a group of men make them holler. When Naegi turns his head back forward again, his mouth connects to custard, and the fish tail's vanishes behind by the time she's worked her way over to them.

"Makoto!" A hand waves in frantic joy, other grasping a bedazzled cordless mic at her hip. That hip- it's tantalizingly visible with every sway forward. Whatever needle had hemmed the dress was sharp with expertise.

Swift, he jumps to his feet to greet her in a hug that makes her comment, " _Bluh_ \- sorry, I'm sweating already. Oh! Togami, right?" He would guess that had his approach been noticed sooner, the pretty perfect idol princess wouldn't have mentioned her drippy pits. Now she changes to hands clasped at the front of her, ducks forward her thick bun dotted in blossom chains. "It's so nice to meet you, thank you for coming!"

Togami's nose looks a helium float. In reply to her servile musing, an arm wraps around Naegi's waist, and nothing more is said until she excuses herself in flitting excitement. Naegi takes it that she's soon to route attention, returning the tickle to his stomach as he pulls himself from the other to rest palms at his forearms. Their gazes meet. "That was Maizono. Um...Kuwata should be around here somewhere, and Kirigiri said she'd come. Do you want to say hi?"

"Ooh! Me first!" And there's a grasp on his biceps, a chin to his shoulder always the devious grinning. Togami has since pulled back from him to lift a brow toward the new interjection, one Naegi dreads already by only her voice.

"Komaru," he mumbles past his teeth, "What are you doing here..?"

His sister shuffles backward to press fingertips before her giggling. The elegant sway of her yukata matches the blue ties holding lowly back tiny twin ponytails. "Sayaka invited me! I wouldn't miss this for the world, she's gonna be the best idol ever!" Beaming melts to a shifty smirk. "You brought your b-"

"There you are, Komaru!" Five times the ache does this new tone jar him. "I thought you wanted takoyaki, why'd you run off? Ah! You found your brother."

A palm touches to his cheek, fine red nails the same shade as his mother's elegant ensemble. "Glad to see you again." Then she pouts mildly, retracts the touch to lick a thumb pad and smudge the custard from his mouth's corner. He wonders if she can feel the burn of his skin.

"There you rascals are." And _of course_ , his father had to come along as well, why not drag the grandparents out to slap humiliation on him too? A carp shaped biscuit with its head severed sits in his hold. Soft red anko mars his mouth's corner. "Hey, Mako, your friend from high school is selling ramen over there, did you see him? You know, the tall one who used to ask me for money all the time?"

"Yeah, uh-"

"Makoto's been too busy, Dad," Komaru tells him in a little lean forward, toes bobbing her up, down, up. "With his boooyfr-"

"Boyfriend," the silent head of the group steps forth, hand extended. "Togami Byakuya, charmed."

A child sprints by them, slushed ice drink a vibrant blue and dripping down the wrist. Clouds have begun to unsettle themselves to make way for the swallow of the remaining sun underground. Naegi does not recall ever feeling as he does now, such a muddled disaster area in his heart in his head- confusion of them equal parts. Because hadn't he just said they weren't even yet friends, hadn't they been so far distanced as to prevent this, and now and now and now...and now his father is gleaming a beam as he shakes this man's hand, and his mother accepts it next, dainty in her slight bow inward and return with her life long smile. "How nice to meet you! Makoto's never mentioned you before." And to him just a turn beside, "He's so _tall_ , honey, are you sure you won't hurt your neck?"

"Mom..."

"You know, you look like type of man who could do sudoku."

" _Dad_..."

"Oh, Makoto, we- Oh, Kyouko!" his mother blinks off into a split of focus to welcome the silent phantom standing with palms to the elbows among them. "You look beautiful, dear."

She does, but Naegi cannot gather the audacity enough to meet her stare, takes in the long flick of lilac tied down her back. That stare isn't his to claim, anyway, pinned rather to one of ice across the group, and Togami seems to fit so picturesque the roll of a prissy little Hilton pooch baring his fangs to adversary. Naegi doesn't think there exists a purse large enough to contain such a character as he.

When from her spot, Kirigiri sports a smirking, Naegi wishes he had invested in that leash when he'd had the chance.

They only have so long as to fear a strike before noise cuts beyond it all. The view isn't the greatest, the atmosphere even worse, yet such a strong throbbing voice can withstand the pressure, does so in her great waving hello. Voices coo their melted hearts back at her. In front of him, Komaru peels off through the crowd, which her mother is quick to huff at and move to follow after. Their father hangs back, strikes up some kind of conversation with the sleek silver of the detective he's watched grow up near as long as his own young ones; Naegi can only pray it's decent, palm to his forehead to slick the worry away.

Longways over, Maizono's pitch rings perfectly into Tanabata-sama for all to hear, a discordant chunk of those gathered around joining in on the lyrics. She's halfway through when he's leant toward, absorbs the whisper only for him.

"I'm not your friend," makes him clench over what's already since vacated. "I don't like your friends."

Color pricks his skin. Togami pulls himself back to full height.

Sheer pink flounces from the patch of grass she'd started out upon, to part down the road same as the traditional dancers had skirted. Her song, the signature, perks along the ears of all around, ones gone back to chatting chewing loving, all part of the holiday all part of the joy. Naegi awaits her parade pass by him, where she floats as the tongue tip prechorus aims its _youuu_ his direction with a wink, a heart formed in the touch of her fingers. The one within his chest stutters.

Her music continues to echo all down the festival bounds, fades as she farthers. Around them all the festival never stops its bustle. Breeze is sudden to flirt in his hair, closes the eyes to breathe in this night ahead of him. That's peace, that's divine. A voice is smooth in pulling the lid clean off it, peeks upwards toward the soft cream lavender milling through that summer night wind.

"You owe me a coffee," Kirigiri tells him, ever calm, blank palette of a look long ahead. He doesn't know where to Togami has disappeared. Hardly ever could he say he's got the perfect understanding of his actions- but he'll force his mind to settle straight, and it calls him into a nod for her smarts.

"...Mai-san misses you," he mumbles. A side of his robe top is pulled another length inward.

She offers no palpable feeling, never one to be a waiting room magazine. The tuck of a lock behind one ear, the rest of arms caressing themselves again. Elegance radiates; he knows she's anything but. "I know. Your father told me."

His eyes pinch in self mortifying, but the collection of himself comes no sooner. He glances to her with a short smile that is not reciprocated, and that in itself widens it, because Kirigiri does not smile or smirk or snicker to show off an adoration. She's a fantasy, sci-fi, quite truly.

One foot steps his way to drag her body with it. His teeth gleaming mirth is untamable, says to her, "Did you see Hagakure? He's selling hiyashi chūka."

Starlight beckons overheadz Within the while, Maizono's made her way around the block to stand among the grass again. The universe sits darkly around her shoulders as she waves grinning to the crowd. "Thank you so much!" echoes against the mic. "My wish to the stars tonight has already come true! I love you, Toyama!"

Applause rains over her head, over fingertips throwing kisses for the crowd, and she's sure to switch her mic off as to not catch her shriek of glee on her skip over his way. It churns to a sprint once his arms lift to extend, smiling in warm ear to ear. Kirigiri stands a pace to the side.

"You did gr-"

"That was killer!" beats from behind one shoulder, and it only tears a few shreds of his heart away to watch her leap into Kuwata's waiting hold, press her lips fresh to his a thick second and laugh wildly on the parting. Her palms hit his chest to pull herself away, ducks furtive looks of paranoia around the way. Nobody likes an idol with a man on her arm.

"I know, it was amazing!" she yips  back, then at last catches Naegi's patient gaze, to which she throws her arms over him quick. "You guys are my favorite fans."

Hands upon his shoulders straighten her, fix her seaglass smile to him; he watches the hours lap by in her irises. A curl presses from his finger to place back behind her ear.

They remain it mere seconds that drag him through dirt to strap into leather, until it is that she catches her nose in the air to the third supporter of the circle, and very practically tosses him aside to wrap her in a hug. "Kirigiri, I'm so so happy you came!"

Naegi allows them the courtesy, blinks himself away from their hand holding one-sided chatter into a stance farther off, though new surprise curls him into stiffening once he's bumped himself backward into another frame. He hasn't the time to spew apology before Togami's got a palm supporting his back.

"Oh, there you are," he breathes, grates away the rest of the world to drink him in. "Where'd you run off to?"

"Yo ho ho, this the guy of your dreams, Naegs?" And motherfucking _scene_. Kuwata tips his posture to a relaxed lean on the air, cocks his cocky grin to them.

"Um-" Naegi feels sweat drip between each shoulder blade. Glances share up, back, to which he toes, "Hi, Kuwata. This is Togami, my...my boyfriend?"

The look faces upways again. It's nothing new to his lips in private, now takes the sting of face to face, though Togami only tucks his arms into one another, shrugs broad firmness. "If you'd like," he allows the most nonchalant. Naegi could right about melt into his own shoes.

From a length, Kuwata throws a hand out to slap the businessman on the bicep. "Welcome to the team then, man. Hey, you interested in investing in what's soon to be the world's swankiest pop star?"

He's only slightly tempted to roll his pupils when the homemade business card exchanges hands. Togami peers at it a moment, flips back front, and tells him, "This will made a wonderful coaster, thank you."

Kuwata can only gawk to him- a worse reaction is sensed in the works, which Naegi offers nerved humor to soften. "Ah, I think they're going to light the tree soon, did you guys put your wishes on it?"

Surely, he's a miracle worker. "Oh, right. I better go on and beg God to cut me some slack once in a while."

He cuffs laughter himself, weaves over to the designated corner of the field around them. Naegi lifts his brows ever slight to the other. Another shrug. They make their way to mimic.

And it's been his idea, sure, but when the tip to his pencil matches beach blue card stock, blank stares are the mind. A month rewound, he'd have burnt through thirty cards and still be writing. Nothing seems so pressing as to bother a God for now, and he's got nothing to his name that he could call perfect in the slightest, only every last smile flashed to him this night. Ten minutes miss him. When he looks to his right, Togami's got the string to his own vibrant green slip at the ready. Pressure nips his heels.

In the scratch of his penmanship, he scrawls _thanks_ , and with hands linked between them, they walk toward the wishing tree.


End file.
